Health & Medicine
‘Vagina Obscura’ shows how little is known about female biology
The new book ‘Vagina Obscura’ chronicles how scientists are finally giving female health and anatomy proper attention.
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Cover Story
How do we know what emotions animals feel?
Animal welfare researchers are studying the feelings and subjective experiences of horses, octopuses and more.
Reviews & Previews
Science Visualized
Oceans
Even the sea has light pollution. These new maps show its extent
Coastal cities and offshore development create enough light to potentially alter behavior of tiny organisms dozens of meters below the surface.
Notebook
Animals
Mirror beetles’ shiny bodies may not act as camouflage after all
Hundreds of handmade clay nubbins test the notion that a beetle’s metallic high gloss could confound predators. Birds pecked the lovely idea to death.
Features
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What we learned about COVID-19 safety from a NYC anime convention
November’s Anime NYC convention was not a COVID-19 superspreader event, which means there are lessons to be learned.
More Stories from the April 9, 2022 issue
- Physics
Physicists explain the mesmerizing movements of raindrops on car windshields
Wind and gravity compete to make some raindrops go up while others slide down, a mathematical analysis suggests.
- Astronomy
Some of the sun’s iconic coronal loops may be illusions
Folds in the plasma that streams from the sun might trick the eye into seeing the well-defined arches, computer simulations of the solar atmosphere show.
- Tech
50 years ago, the future of solar energy looked bright
In the 1970s, scientists and engineers were coming around to the idea of “farming” the sun’s energy on a large scale.
- Animals
The spongy moth’s new name replaces an ethnic slur
The Entomological Society of America renamed Lymantria dispar the “spongy moth,” replacing its previous problematic common name, “gypsy moth.”
- Earth
The mysterious Hiawatha crater in Greenland is 58 million years old
An impact crater spotted in 2015 in Greenland is far too old to be connected to the Younger Dryas cold snap from 13,000 years ago, a study suggests.
- Paleontology
Scientists are arguing over the identity of a fossilized 10-armed creature
An ancient cephalopod fossil may be the oldest ancestor of octopuses, but the interpretation hinges on the identification of one feature.
- Health & Medicine
A gene therapy for hemophilia boosts levels of a crucial clotting protein
A one-time, gene-based treatment for hemophilia increased the amount of a necessary blood clotting protein in men with a severe form of the disease.
- Life
Lithium mining may be putting some flamingos in Chile at risk
Climate change and lithium mining are threatening the flooded salt flats that flamingos in Chile depend on, a study suggests.
- Genetics
An extinct rat shows CRISPR’s limits for resurrecting species
Scientists recovered most of the Christmas Island rat’s genome. But the missing genes signal a problem for using gene editing to de-extinct species.
- Astronomy
Astronomers may not have found a sign of the universe’s first stars after all
A new study of radio waves from early in the universe’s history finds no hint of the “cosmic dawn” claimed by an earlier study.
- Oceans
Some deep-sea octopuses aren’t the long-haul moms scientists thought they were
Off California’s coast, some octopuses lay eggs in the warmer water of geothermal springs in the “Octopus Garden,” speeding up their development.
- Astronomy
Earth’s purported ‘nearest black hole’ isn’t a black hole
A disputed multiple-star system doesn’t have a black hole, as once reported, but is actually a missing piece in binary star evolution.
- Animals
How to make irresistible traps for Asian giant hornets using sex
Traps baited with compounds found in the sex pheromone of hornet queens attracted thousands of males in China.
- Neuroscience
A hit of dopamine sends mice into dreamland
New results are some of the first to show a trigger for the mysterious shifts between REM and non-REM sleep in mice.
