[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Want to Talk to Aliens? Try Changing the Technological Channel Beyond Radio The endeavor known as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has long relied on radio telescopes to listen for broadcasts from potential alien callers. Yet in an expansive galaxy such as ours, … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Common Steroid Could Be Cheap and Effective Treatment for Severe COVID-19 Editor’s Note (9/2/20): This story is being republished in light of the results of several international clinical trials that have found steroids may be a lifesaving treatment for the sickest COVID-19 patients. The World Health … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Deep-Sea Mining: How to Balance Need for Metals with Ecological Impacts Slashing humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels will require billions of kilograms of metal: a single wind turbine can contain more than a metric ton of copper, and electric car batteries demand heaps of … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] COVID-Era Isolation is Making Dangerous Eating Disorders Worse Rosey has lived with bulimia for more than a decade. The 31-year-old resident of Melbourne, Australia, started therapy for her eating disorder six years ago. Although she says she had never considered herself “cured,” she had … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Storm Surge: The Science behind This Year’s Hyperactive Hurricane Season The peak of the Atlantic hurricane season has arrived and is living up to its name: Two storms, Laura and Marco, developed within the relatively small confines of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Two Strains of Polio Down, One to Go Editor’s Note (8/25/20): This article is being republished today in light of the news that Africa is expected to be declared free of wild polio. The achievement comes after decades of vaccination drives succeeded in driving … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] ‘Warp Speed’ COVID-19 Vaccine Efforts Aim for Diverse Volunteers and Long-Lasting Protection In late July, volunteers began receiving doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine in the latest stage of a clinical trial at NYU Langone Health in New York City. The more than 1,000 … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Schools Have No Good Options for Reopening during COVID-19 Even as schools have already begun reopening across the United States, debate is still intensifying over whether students should be physically present in classrooms. Children are widely thought to be at relatively low risk of … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Time’s Arrow Flies through 500 Years of Classical Music, Physicists Say What, exactly, makes music to the ears? Time will tell, according to a new study of five centuries’ worth of compositions. Using techniques derived from statistical mechanics—typically used to study large groups of … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] This Twist on Schrödinger’s Cat Paradox Has Major Implications for Quantum Theory What does it feel like to be both alive and dead? That question irked and inspired Hungarian-American physicist Eugene Wigner in the 1960s. He was frustrated by the paradoxes arising from the … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Costa Rica Readies Horse Antibodies for Trials as an Inexpensive COVID-19 Therapy Development of the hundreds of vaccines and therapies for COVID-19 is by no means confined to metro areas surrounding San Francisco, Boston or Washington, D.C. Borrowing from decades of experience in producing … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] A 429-Million-Year-Old Trilobite Had Eyes like Those of Modern Bees Perfectly pristine fossils might make great museum showpieces, but they are not always the most informative for paleontologists. Some of the more salient secrets of ancient life are locked inside fossils, and lucky breaks … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Women in Science May Suffer Lasting Career Damage from COVID-19 On a recent weeknight, biochemist and postdoctoral researcher Emilia Arturo read to her two children, tucked them into bed, then slipped into her car and drove 15 minutes to the La Jolla Institute for … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Weird Mystery Seeds Arriving by Mail Sprout Biodiversity Concerns Americans from Maine to Texas have recently reported receiving mysterious packages sent from China. Often labeled as jewelry, the parcels instead contain clear plastic bags with unknown seeds of various shapes, sizes and colors. The … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] How Do Scientists Determine the Ages of Human Ancestors, Fossilized Dinosaurs and Other Organisms? On the Atlantic coast of the U.S., archaeologists found oyster shells left by Native Americans more than 4,000 years ago. In Morocco, paleontologists excavated the fossils of a dinosaur that … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] How Dozens of Languages Help Build Gender Stereotypes Linguists use machine-learning techniques for mining large text corpora to detect how the structure of a language lends meaning to its words. They work on the assumption that terms that appear in close proximity to one … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] How to Evaluate COVID-19 News without Freaking Out Whether we are constantly checking the number of new infections, tracking the progress of vaccine trials or “anxiety scrolling” through Twitter, the news surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic can be overwhelming. Sorting the good information from the … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Neural Switch Flips on Aggression in Male Mice When a male mouse senses a territorial threat from another male, an aggressive reaction toward the invader instinctively kicks in. When the same mouse detects a sexually receptive female, however, his reaction tends to be a … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Concerns about Waning COVID-19 Immunity Are Likely Overblown COVID-19 triggers a strong immune response in most people. Yet several recent studies observed that the amounts of antibodies in those recovering from the virus appear to decline within a few months of infection. The findings … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Do Animals Really Anticipate Earthquakes? Sensors Hint They Do Despite freezing temperatures, scores of snakes slithered out of their hibernation dens in the weeks before a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck the Chinese city of Haicheng on February 4, 1975. The reptiles’ behavior, along with … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] Plants Have Hormones, Too, and Tweaking Them Could Improve Food Supply Between crop damage caused by climate change, and a rising global population and nutritional demand, it is clear the world will need to produce more food in the future. Researchers have long studied … Read more
[responsivevoice_button rate=”1″ pitch=”1.2″ volume=”0.8″ voice=”US English Female” buttontext=”Story in Audio”] One Mystery of Stonehenge’s Origins Has Finally Been Solved For more than four centuries, archaeologists and geologists have sought to determine the geographical origins of the stones used to build Stonehenge thousands of years ago. Pinning down the source of the large blocks known … Read more