Divers monitoring coral reefs off St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands in January noticed something alarming: Big white lesions were eating into the colorful tissues of hundreds of stony corals. Some corals were dead by the next day — only their stark white skeletons remained. Others languished for up to two weeks. Within four […]

There once was a little bird, smaller than a sparrow, that lived about 99 million years ago. And it had a freakishly long toe. Researchers found the ancient bird’s right leg and foot preserved in a chunk of amber. Its third digit is 9.8 millimeters long, about 41 percent longer than its second-longest digit — […]

Carlos Jared discovered the first known venomous frog by accident. And it took him a long time to connect his pain with tree frogs that head-butted his hand. Jared, now at the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, got his first hint of true venom when collecting yellow-skinned frogs (Corythomantis greeningi) among cacti and scrubby trees […]

The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted the earliest known galaxy to abruptly stop forming stars. The galaxy, called GS-9209, quenched its star formation more than 12.5 billion years ago, researchers report January 26 at arXiv.org. That’s only a little more than a billion years after the Big Bang. Its existence reveals new details about […]

MIT chemist Admir Masic really hoped his experiment wouldn’t explode. Masic and his colleagues were trying to re-create an ancient Roman technique for making concrete, a mix of cement, gravel, sand and water. The researchers suspected that the key was a process called “hot mixing,” in which dry granules of calcium oxide, also called quicklime, […]

In Appalachia’s coal country, researchers envision turning toxic waste into treasure. The pollution left behind by abandoned mines is an untapped source of rare earth elements. Rare earths are a valuable set of 17 elements needed to make everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to fluorescent bulbs and lasers. With global demand skyrocketing and China […]

Prairie voles have long been heralded as models of monogamy. Now, a study suggests that the “love hormone” once thought essential for their bonding — oxytocin — might not be so necessary after all. Interest in the romantic lives of prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) was first sparked more than 40 years ago, says Devanand Manoli, […]

Penicillin, effective against many bacterial infections, is often a first-line antibiotic. Yet it is also one of the most common causes of drug allergies. Around 10 percent of people say they’ve had an allergic reaction to penicillin, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now researchers have found a genetic link to […]

The fate of a potential new Alzheimer’s drug is still uncertain. Evidence that the drug works isn’t convincing enough for it to be approved, outside experts told the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during a Nov. 6 virtual meeting that at times became contentious. The scientists and clinicians were convened at the request of the […]

Bacteria go to extremes to handle hard times: They hunker down, building a fortress-like shell around their DNA and turning off all signs of life. And yet, when times improve, these dormant spores can rise from the seeming dead. But “you gotta be careful when you decide to come back to life,” says Peter Setlow, […]