Some years ago, scientists in Switzerland found a way to make people hallucinate. They didn’t use LSD or sensory deprivation chambers. Instead, they sat people in a chair and asked them to push a button that, a fraction of a second later, caused a rod to gently press their back. After a few rounds, the […]
On June 4, 2013, Buck 8917 did something weird, for a deer: He took a long, purposeful walk. Researchers from Penn State had captured and put a GPS collar on the adult male that spring in Bald Eagle State Forest, about 15 miles northeast of State College, Pa. Put a tracker on most deer and […]
Questions about whether Covid leaked from a Chinese laboratory have cast a chill over American virus research, drying up funding for scientists who collect or alter dangerous pathogens and intensifying a debate over those practices. The pullback has transformed one of the most highly charged fields of medical science. While some believe such experiments could […]
Is the asteroid Psyche really a hunk of mostly metal? Is the object, which is nearly as wide as Massachusetts, the core of a baby planet whose rocky outer layers were knocked off during a cataclysmic collision in the early days of the solar system? Right now, all that astronomers can say is maybe, maybe […]
The bodies of the dead drift to the bottom of the ocean, where the bottom dwellers make use of them. They make temporary reefs from the bones of modern whales, and they did the same for their earlier relatives and Mesozoic seagoing reptiles. Such recycling dates back to 530 million years ago, when complex animal […]
The News Approximately 20 percent of adolescents had symptoms of major depressive disorder in 2021 — the first full calendar year of the pandemic — but less than half who needed treatment received it, according to a new study. The research, published in JAMA Pediatrics, found that treatment was most lacking for minority adolescents, particularly […]
A new study has an encouraging message for Americans who shy away from Covid shots because of worries about side effects: The chills, fatigue, headache and malaise that can follow vaccination may be signs of a vigorous immune response. People who had those side effects after the second dose of a Covid vaccine had more […]
Panting after chasing the impala now in its jaws, a leopard drags its prey to a shady spot beside a water hole. Before it can sit down to feast, a voice, seemingly out of nowhere, begins speaking calmly. “It is very difficult to talk in Afrikaans …,” begins the bodiless voice. The leopard pauses, glances […]
There is a memorable scene in “Oppenheimer,” the blockbuster film about the building of the atomic bomb, in which Luis Alvarez, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, is reading a newspaper while getting a haircut. Suddenly, Alvarez leaps from his seat and sprints down the road to find his colleague, the theoretical physicist […]
Winning a Nobel Prize can be a life-changing event. The winners are thrust onto a world stage, and for many scientists the recognition represents the pinnacle of their careers. But what is the effect of winning such a high-profile prize on science? John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University, wants to find out. Awards like […]
