By Nadia Drake Let’s be clear about one thing: Re-heating coffee in the microwave is always a poor life choice. But it becomes especially unwise if you’re using a microwave oven near a radio telescope and you’re so eager for that icky, burnt and wholly unsatisfying taste that you prematurely pop the coffee Read Full…
By Brian Switek “Will there ever be a real Jurassic Park?” I’ve heard this question more times than I can count. The answer is always “No“. Aside from the problem of getting a viable clone to develop inside a bird egg – one that scientists haven’t Read Full Article Here For more great articles: Phenomena
By Brian Switek Paleontology collections are wonderful. Shelves and cabinets hold anywhere from thousands to hundreds of millions of years of life’s history, assembling giant ground sloths, Cambrian oddballs, petrified plants, and other fantastic organisms into a fossilized menagerie. And as much as I’ve enjoyed my opportunities to explore Read Full Article Here For more…
By Ed Yong In the 1970s, scientists noticed that soft-shell clams along the east coast of North America were dying from a strange type of cancer. Their blood, which was typically clear, would fill with so many cells that it would turn milky. The rogue cells clogged and infiltrated the clams’ organs, Read Full Article…
By Maryn McKenna About this time of year, 4 years ago, people in Germany began falling ill with diarrhea, nausea and fever. At first it looked like a small outbreak, though a troubling one: One out of every three victims needed to be admitted to the hospital. Then the outbreak expanded, and expanded Read Full…
By Brian Switek Some fossils feel like old friends. As happy as I am to encounter petrified skeletons I’ve never seen before in museum halls, there’s something comforting about rounding a corner to find a cast of AMNH 5027 – the first Tyrannosaurus I ever met – or see Read Full Article Here For more…
By Ed Yong Breast milk seems like a simple nutritious cocktail for feeding babies, but it is so much more than that. It also contains nutrients that feed the beneficial bacteria in a baby’s gut, and it contains substances that can change a baby’s behaviour. So, when a mother breastfeeds her child, she Read Full…
By Maryn McKenna A plant-based ointment recipe pulled from a 1,000-year-old manuscript is spiking excitement about what historical knowledge and traditional remedies can do to defuse the antibiotic crisis. At the same time, it’s highlighting how difficult it can be to move any compound—natural or synthetic, ancient or modern—from the lab bench Read Full Article…
By Carl Zimmer The more you think about sickness and health, the trickier it gets to draw a clean line between them. We tend to think of ourselves as being prepared by nature for a good life. If we can just keep bacteria and viruses from killing us, and avoid walking into open Read Full…
By Maryn McKenna Figuring out how to talk about antibiotic resistance—which you’ll be seeing discussed here a lot, since it’s the topic of my last book, an important part of my next book, and a central topic in my past blogging—is a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, antibiotic Read Full Article Here For…