Science News
Mattel just rolled out an ‘autism Barbie’. Can it help counteract RFK, Jr.’s misinformation?
[T]oymaker Mattel released the very first autistic Barbie doll. ... Her eyes are slightly averted, and she’s holding a communication ...
Here’s how creationists have creatively tried to undermine the teachings of evolution in America’s classrooms since the Scopes trial in 1925
Bans on teaching evolution prevailed ... until high school teacher Susan Epperson took on Arkansas’ version [in the 1960s] As Science News wryly ...
Ancient North American ancestry: Geneticist helps Pueblo tribe affirm its long-denied roots
Members of New Mexico’s Picuris Pueblo Tribal Nation have long told stories about having descended from ancient North American ancestors ...
Wooly mice: A small step forward in the challenging effort to de-extinct the Pleistocene-era wooly mammoth
Scientists working to unlock the secrets of de-extinction recently announced what they say is a turning point for the movement: ...
Can we repurpose parasites to deliver drugs to the brain?
Some question if a parasite can ever be rendered harmless enough to be used as a treatment to get drugs ...
Engineering cell superpowers: Nanomachines can fix broken parts in our cells, helping break down food, clot blood and destroy germs
Engineer Kerstin Göpfrich leads a research group focused on the “engineering of life” at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research ...
Geroscience: Searching for compounds that could extend our lives
By addressing the root causes of aging, researchers hope to stave off the disability and diseases that can make old ...
The first GMO was developed 50 years ago this November. Here are 8 key milestones in agriculture and medicine since
Half a century ago, the first genetically modified organism ushered in a new era of biological innovation. To mark this ...
Oldest known wooden structure: Unearthed 480,000-year-old interlocking logs found in Zambia suggest early hominids had advanced technical skills
Modified logs dating to about 476,000 years ago might be the oldest evidence of wooden structures, a new study finds ...
Human kidneys grown in pig embryos? Xenotransplantation strides into the future
Scientists introduced human stem cells into pig embryos engineered to lack a kidney, stem cells then differentiated and grew into ...
‘Closest thing to human embryos yet’: Lab-grown fertilized cells more advanced and living longer than ever
Human embryo replicas: The lab-engineered models give scientists a look at human development beyond the first week ...
Self love: Why masturbation evolved
The behavior may help males be fertile and disease-free. But data on females are lacking ...
Is it possible to read minds with brain scans?
Like Dumbledore’s wand, a scan can pull long strings of stories straight out of a person’s brain — but only ...
‘It’s an erroneous belief that racial categories are objective and natural’: Experts recommend losing racial labels in genetic studies
Human biological diversity is a continuum, but racial labels imply that people fall into discreet categories. For that reason, race ...
Growing rice on Mars? Gene-edited rice might be able to grow in the Red Planet’s soil
Martian dirt may have all the necessary nutrients for growing rice, one of humankind’s most important foods, planetary scientist Abhilash ...
Genes play larger role in how we respond to COVID than originally thought
Getting COVID-19 can feel a little like playing roulette: It causes colds for some, but severe disease and death for ...
Keeping and caring for animals: Evidence emerges that human-animal bond reaches back 13,000 years ago
Hunter-gatherer groups living in southwest Asia may have started keeping and caring for animals nearly 13,000 years ago — roughly ...
How did dogs evolve to be such close partners with humans? It may be helpful to look to mythology as well as science
The similarities between wolves and early domesticated dogs can make it challenging for researchers to tell them apart. In the ...
Multiple sclerosis may be partially caused by a virus. Could a vaccine be the solution?
Why people develop multiple sclerosis (MS) has been a long-standing question. Studies have pointed to certain gene variations and environmental ...
When does life begin? Here are five critical points in a pregnancy — and the misconceptions surrounding them
Like most aspects of biology, early human development involves many complex processes. Despite the rhetoric around these issues, clear lines ...
Disentangling the links between diet, genes and dementia
Dementia, like most chronic diseases, is the result of a complex interplay of genes, lifestyle and environment that researchers don’t ...
Book review: ‘The Rise and Reign of the Mammals’ is Steve Brusatte’s sweeping history of how mammals took over the world
[In] The Rise and Reign of the Mammals, paleontologist Steve Brusatte’s [recounts the] sweeping history of the animals that have, ...
How the search for mates across prehistoric Africa shaped human evolution
Ancient Africans in search of mates traded long-distance travels for regional connections starting about 20,000 years ago, an analysis of ...
From cloning to de-extinction: Scientists encounter limits on using CRISPR to resurrect animal species
With the advent of gene-editing technology such as CRISPR, scientists have shifted from cloning to genetic engineering as the most ...
2.5 billion gene altered mosquitoes — designed to end spread of Zika, dengue and malaria — to be released in two-year experiment in California and Florida, EPA decides
Genetically modified mosquitoes might soon be whining on both U.S. coasts. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved two more years of ...
Genetics has come a long way since Gregor Mendel mapped inheritance using peas: Deconstructing the muddle of genetics and inheritance
The year was 1900. Three European botanists — one Dutch, one German and one Austrian — all reported results from ...
It’s been almost 20 years since the first crude map of the human genome was released. Here’s what we’ve learned
In October 1990, biologists officially embarked on one of the century’s most ambitious scientific efforts: reading the 3 billion pairs ...
Black Americans are under-represented in genetic studies. Here’s why that’s an issue — and what’s being done to address it
The overwhelming majority of genetic data is from people of European ancestry. As of early January, nearly 96 percent of ...
