Parasites can drive their hosts to do weird, dumb things. But in certain oak trees, the parasites themselves get played. “Creepy and awesome,” says Kelly Weinersmith of Rice University in Houston, who has helped reveal a Russian doll of nested parasitisms. The saga begins when two majestic live oak species in the southeastern United States ... Read more
Much of what happens on the Earth’s surface is connected to activity far below. “Beneath Our Feet,” a temporary exhibit at the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center in the Boston Public Library, explores the ways people have envisioned, explored and exploited what lies underground. “We’re trying to visualize those places that humans don’t naturally go ... Read more
An immune system mainstay in the fight against viruses may harm rather than help a pregnancy. In Zika-infected mice, this betrayal appears to contribute to fetal abnormalities linked to the virus, researchers report online January 5 in Science Immunology. And it could explain pregnancy complications that arise from infections with other pathogens and from autoimmune ... Read more
We’re going to need a bigger trash can. A pooling of plastic waste floating in the ocean between California and Hawaii contains at least 79,000 tons of material spread over 1.6 million square kilometers, researchers report March 22 in Scientific Reports. That’s the equivalent to the mass of more than 6,500 school buses. Known as ... Read more
THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS — A young, ultrabright Jupiter may have desiccated its now hellish moon Io. The planet’s bygone brilliance could have also vaporized water on Europa and Ganymede, planetary scientist Carver Bierson reported March 17 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. If true, the findings could help researchers narrow the search for icy ... Read more
In a book about his travels in Africa published in 1907, British explorer Arnold Henry Savage Landor recounted witnessing an impromptu meal that his companions relished but that he found unimaginably revolting. As he coasted down a river in the Congo Basin with several local hunter-gatherers, a dead rodent floated near their canoe. Its decomposing ... Read more
Hayabusa2 has blasted the asteroid Ryugu with a projectile, probably adding a crater to the small world’s surface and stirring up dust that scientists hope to snag. The projectile, a two-kilogram copper cylinder, separated from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft at 9:56 p.m. EDT on April 4, JAXA, Japan’s space agency, reports. Hayabusa2 flew to the other ... Read more
A skull found in a cliffside cave on Greece’s southern coast in 1978 represents the oldest Homo sapiens fossil outside Africa, scientists say. That skull, from an individual who lived at least 210,000 years ago, was encased in rock that also held a Neandertal skull dating to at least 170,000 years ago, contends a team ... Read more
Bacteria can slip into the brain by commandeering cells in the brain’s protective layers, a new study finds. The results hint at how a deadly infection called bacterial meningitis takes hold. In mice infected with meningitis-causing bacteria, the microbes exploit previously unknown communication between pain-sensing nerve cells and immune cells to slip by the brain’s ... Read more
The Milky Way is churning out far more stars than previously thought, according to a new estimate of its star formation rate. Gamma rays from aluminum-26, a radioactive isotope that arises primarily from massive stars, reveal that the Milky Way converts four to eight solar masses of interstellar gas and dust into new stars each ... Read more