A dog’s brain is wired for smell. Now, a new map shows just how extensive that wiring is. Powerful nerve connections link the dog nose to wide swaths of the brain, researchers report July 11 in the Journal of Neuroscience. One of these canine connections, a hefty link between areas that handle smell and vision, […]

Two partial skeletons unearthed in northeastern China have dashed the record for the oldest avian relatives of today’s birds. The remains belonged to a species, Archaeornithura meemannae, that lived 130.7 million years ago — about 6 million years earlier than the previous record holders. Fossil hunters discovered bones of the hummingbird-sized creatures embedded in siltstone […]

The 18-year-old had stabbed himself four times in the neck and chest with a pair of scissors. Alone in his dorm room, he had suddenly felt trapped, convinced that the only way to get out was to kill himself. When he woke up hours later in a pool of blood, the psychedelic trip that had […]

Earth — a planet of oceans, rivers and rainforests — grew up in an interplanetary desert. When the solar system formed about 4.6 billion years ago, shards of calcium- and aluminum-rich minerals stuck together, building ever-larger pebbles and boulders that smashed together and assembled the rocky planets, including Earth. But Earth’s signature ingredient was nowhere […]

I blame my love for science fiction mostly on my mother, although my older brother Nathaniel probably should also take some of the heat. Both were voracious readers, leaving piles of books around the house, most of them sci-fi, that I couldn’t avoid escaping into.Fans of science fiction will find a few items in this […]

On a sunny day at Zoo Atlanta in 2020, Kelly the African bush elephant reached for a snack and revealed something strange. High-speed cameras tracking her movements suggested that the skin on top of Kelly’s trunk stretched more than the skin underneath. “But that didn’t make any sense,” says Andrew Schulz, a mechanical engineer at […]

Huge bubbles of plasma billowing out from the Milky Way’s center might contain scraps from all over the galaxy — and beyond. A new look at gas clouds in the galaxy’s Fermi bubbles shows that the clouds contain stuff from the galaxy’s starry disk and from some mysterious other source. The finding could shed light […]

The secret to efficiently heating some buildings might lurk beneath our feet, in the heat that humans have inadvertently stored underground. Just as cities warm the surrounding air, giving rise to urban heat islands, so too does human infrastructure warm the underlying earth (SN: 3/27/09). Now, an analysis of groundwater well sites across Europe and […]

Four weeks ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed off on COVID-19 vaccines for young children. Days later, doctors’ offices and clinics began rolling out shots for babies and toddlers. In Portland, Ore., a clinic featuring bubbles, toys and a dance party delivered more than 1,100 shots in two days. In Arizona, […]