Science News

A century-old trick for tuning musical instruments has been repurposed to power robots that fly, float and steer themselves using nothing but sound waves.

Scientists discovered that human microglia, immune cells that help shape developing brain circuits, can take four to eight years to mature instead of just weeks as they do in mice. The unusually slow process may help exp...

Researchers discovered a possible way cancer cells hide from the immune system: they build a thick, sugar-rich coating around themselves. High blood sugar can strengthen this protective shield under conditions that resem...

A new study suggests that at least 1 in 4 former NFL players who died in recent years had CTE. Concussion expert Thayne Munce puts the finding into context.

One of the central ideas in modern physics is the phase transition-a sudden transformation of the state of a material. We encounter phase transitions throughout everyday life: water freezes into ice, wax melts in the war...

Metal-insulator transitions (MITs), in which a material changes from a metallic state with low resistivity to an insulating state because of a change in an external parameter, such as temperature, pressure or an electric...

No matter where youre from, there are things you can do to cope better with extreme temperatures. But it takes work to stop our bodies adaptations from slipping backwards over winter, and there are limits to how far we c...

Two widely used zero-calorie sweeteners, sucralose and stevia, may have effects that linger far longer than the sweet taste itself. In mice, researchers found that both sweeteners altered the gut microbiome, reduced bene...

This crown depicts two birds of prey and was discovered in the grave of a fifth-century noblewoman in Crimea.

A simple waist measurement may be nearly as effective as more complicated methods for detecting unhealthy levels of body fat. Researchers also found that BMI alone missed many people with obesity, suggesting waist size c...

Scientists have uncovered hidden complexity inside two ultrathin superconductors that seemed much simpler than they really are. Niobium diselenide and tantalum disulfide appeared to have a single superconducting state, b...

Carnegie Mellon University scientists have uncovered a new phenomenon that challenges a longstanding assumption about how electronic materials respond to magnetic fields. The discovery broadens the fundamental understand...

Physicists have demonstrated a new way to entangle distant quantum bits without the constant measurements and active control normally required. The team created a quantum bath, a shared environment filled with correlated...

A long-standing picture of brain evolution as newer, rational layers stacked on top of an ancient lizard brain may be deeply misleading. Researchers found that evolution instead appears to balance two competing styles of...

Wild monkeys in West Africa can climb vertical tree trunks using foot flexibility scientists did not realize they possessed. The discovery challenges a key assumption about what the last common ancestor of humans and chi...

For nearly 80 years, physicists have relied on a thought experiment created by Richard Feynman to predict how quantum particles behave. For the first time, researchers in China have tested this trick directly in the lab....

Animal studies have shown that lithium orotate could help stave off dementia, and a human trial is about to start to see if the effects hold. Columnist Alice Klein takes a look at the benefits and downsides of lithium

Alcohol-related liver disease may trap damaged liver cells in a regenerative limbo, preventing the organ from rebuilding itself even after drinking stops. Researchers linked the problem to inflammation-driven RNA errors ...

NASAs Roman Space Telescope has launched on a million mile journey to L2, where it will scan huge portions of the cosmos for clues about dark matter, dark energy, and distant worlds. With survey speeds roughly 1,000 time...

Rocky planets may have been able to start forming just 100 million years after the Big Bang, thanks to enormous early supernovae that scattered planet-building elements across space. Simulations found enough solid materi...

Diamond was thought to be incapable of producing electricity through mechanical deformation, but ultrathin flexible diamond membranes have now shown a strong and repeatable piezoelectric effect. The unexpected discovery ...