Live Science
Womb temperature determines the sex of the offspring in many reptiles. Why not in humans?
Temperature controls sex determination, in all crocodilians, most turtles, many fish, and some lizards, according to organismal biologist Karla Moeller ...
We were never alone: How many human species have existed?
When it comes to figuring out exactly how many distinct species of humans existed, it gets complicated pretty quickly, especially ...
A vaccine for melanoma? It might soon be possible
Unlike vaccines that prevent infections, such as measles and influenza, cancer vaccines are a form of immunotherapy that take down ...
How long do most mammal species survive before going extinct?
How long do species usually last before they go extinct? It turns out the answer we find now could be ...
COVID immunity could last years, even decades, study suggests — but we can’t know for sure
[W]e won't know exactly how long immunity lasts without continuing to study those who have recovered from COVID-19. However, [a] new study, ...
How the brain bends our sense of time
Time in the brain doesn't follow the steady ticking of the world's most precise clocks. Instead, it seems to fly by ...
‘From plate to poop’: Why corn survives digestion and what it means for your health
Corn has a way of staying intact from plate to poop. The bright yellow kernels found in our favorite summer ...
Can you change your personality as you age?
Personality is the pattern of thoughts, feelings and behaviors unique to a person. People tend to think of personality as fixed. But ...
What would life on Earth be like if humans were wiped out?
What would happen to our planet — to our cities, to our industries, to nature — if humans disappeared? There ...
DNA shows Neanderthals mated with humans in two waves, not just once
[A]ncient humans mated with Neanderthals between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago, well before the more recent, and better-known mixing of the two ...
Discovery of fire lit up human evolution. When did it occur?
Scientists suspect that without a control over fire, humans probably would never have developed large brains and the benefits that ...
Are we any closer to understanding what consciousness is?
Thinkers have spent an immense amount of time and ink trying to unravel mysteries, such as how consciousness works and ...
How humans might play a role in our own extinction
[W]hat if human extinction was less a cinematic scenario, and instead, a looming reality? That might seem like a sensational ...
To this man, numbers look like scrambled “spaghetti” but his brain works fine. What’s going on?
RFS is the first patient with an inability to see numbers. "He sees something … a scramble of lines and ...
Zealandia revealed: Maps and interactive tools uncover backstory of Earth’s ‘lost’ eighth continent
Earth's eighth continent is 94% underwater.... ... Zealandia — or Te Riu-a-Māui, as it's referred to in the indigenous Māori ...
Century-old lung helps scientists trace measles back to now-eradicated cattle virus
For years, the lung sat in the basement of the Berlin Museum of Medical History along with hundreds of other ...
Why were these 1,000-year-old skulls shaped like ‘sci-fi aliens’?
Tight wrapping in childhood produced deliberately deformed skulls ...
Battling antibiotic resistance by stopping evolution
One of the ways that bacteria evolve to become "antibiotic resistant" is by picking up free-floating genetic material from their environments. They ...
Zika virus could offer new way to attack deadly brain cancers
New research has revealed that the Zika virus breaks into brain cells by using a special molecular key, and scientists ...
Distinctive ‘Habsburg jaw’ of medieval kings and queens was created by centuries of inbreeding, study suggests
Many of the kings and queens of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty, which ruled across Europe from the 16th to the ...
Aggressive cancer adapts quickly thanks to odd ‘doughnut-shaped’ DNA
Cancer cells may owe some of their destructive nature to unique, "doughnut-shaped" DNA, according to a new study. The study, published ...
How Nazi Germany pioneered the use of performance enhancing drugs in WWII
The remarkable endurance of German and Allied soldiers during World War II had a secret ingredient: performance-enhancing drugs. During the ...
Destructive diets: Are we eating Earth’s large animals to extinction?
In new research published [February 6] in the journal Conservation Letters, scientists surveyed the populations of nearly 300 species of megafauna ...
Can aggressive cancer cells be transformed into ‘harmless fat’?
Imagine if you could turn aggressive cancer cells into harmless fat. Scientists in Switzerland say they've done just that, in ...
Not so-sterile brains? Researchers find harmless bacteria living there
In the latest example of bacteria being "literally everywhere," scientists appear to have found evidence of microbes living harmlessly in ...
‘People are primed for ET’: Why the discovery of alien life won’t frighten us
On [October 30] 80 years ago, actor Orson Welles announced to audiences in a chilling radio performance that Martians were ...
Longer lives for humans? Here’s what it will take
How healthy will the world be in 2040? If things continue as they are now, the answer is better off ...
Medieval graves yield genetic clues about kinship of Germanic warrior family
A dozen lavish medieval graves holding the remains of 13 people have finally spilled their genetic secrets, now that researchers ...
