One of the braziers recovered from the grave site. Some had residues from cannabis smoking in them. (Credit: Xinhua Wu)More than 40 tombs dot the southeastern corner of the Pamir plateau, a desert landscape at…
Himalayan Marmots are Revealing How Animals Adapt to…
A Himalayan marmot. (Credit: Yuanqing Tao) How do animals live in the cold, oxygen-starved environments of the high mountains? Himalayan marmots — beaver-ish rodents of unusual size — may have an answer, find scientists who…
In Praise of Parasites
Kevin Lafferty emerges from the waters off Anacapa Island near Ventura, California, after spearing fish in March 2018. He’s advising a UCSB PhD student on research to determine if reef fish inside protected marine reserves…
Astronauts Land Safely in Kazakhstan Aboard Recently Repaired…
Expedition 57 crew members Alexander Gerst of ESA (European Space Agency), left, Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos, center, and Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA landed safely in Kazakhstan after six months in space. (Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls) A…
Gut Microbes Could Soon Diagnose and Explain The…
(Credit: sedat seven/shutterstock) Doctors have long scratched their heads over the causes and cures for two common diseases of the digestive system: IBS and IBD. But research out today in Science Translational Medicine takes a…
Could Extraterrestrial Sugar Explain How Life Began on…
A composite image of meteors falling through Earth’s atmosphere during the 2015 Perseid meteor shower. (Credit: Belish/Shutterstock) Extraterrestrial Sugar Scientists have discovered derivatives of life’s building blocks in carbon-rich meteorite samples, a first. They also showed…
Shrinking Planets May Explain Why Hot Super-earths Exist
This artist’s concept shows giant clouds of hydrogen (blue) evaporating from the Neptune-sized exoplanet GJ 3470b as energetic charged particles from its host star beat down on the planet. The hydrogen is escaping the planet…