The twilight zone of sleep: That’s a sweet spot for human creativity

The twilight zone of sleep: That’s a sweet spot for human creativity

Laura Sanders | Science News | 
People who recently drifted off into a light sleep later had problem-solving power, scientists report December 8 in Science Advances ...
Climate change-induced droughts and floods put one of the world’s most important staples — rice — in peril

Climate change-induced droughts and floods put one of the world’s most important staples — rice — in peril

Nikk Ogasa | Science News | 
Farmers in China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam — the biggest rice-growing countries — as well as in Nigeria, Africa’s largest ...
‘The notion of humankind’s African origins unifies researchers’: Human evolution is like a braided stream, fossil and DNA evidence suggests

‘The notion of humankind’s African origins unifies researchers’: Human evolution is like a braided stream, fossil and DNA evidence suggests

Erin Wayman | Science News | 
In a field with a reputation for bitter feuds and rivalries, the notion of humankind’s African origins unifies human evolution ...
Ancient humans mated with Neanderthals as recently as 45,000 years ago

Ancient humans mated with Neanderthals as recently as 45,000 years ago

Bruce Bower | Science News | 
Analyses of DNA found in human fossils from around [45,000 years ago] — the oldest known human remains in Europe ...
Toothpaste that can treat peanut allergies? It’s in clinical trials

Toothpaste that can treat peanut allergies? It’s in clinical trials

Esther Landhuis | Science News | 
A New York City–based company has launched a trial to start testing [a new] concept in a small group of ...
20 years after the Human Genome Project: Efforts are underway to capture human genetic diversity and catalog missing DNA

20 years after the Human Genome Project: Efforts are underway to capture human genetic diversity and catalog missing DNA

Tina Hesman Saey | Science News | 
The Human Genome Project — which built the blueprint, called the human reference genome — has changed the way medical ...
Biologist Emily Willingham explores humans’ obsession with animal penises in “Phallacy”

Biologist Emily Willingham explores humans’ obsession with animal penises in “Phallacy”

Bethany Brookshire | Science News | 
The organ appears in religious texts, laws, daily speech and even in photos sent, often uninvited, to people’s phones. But ...
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CRISPR can transform bad fat into good fat, helping us stay lean and fighting diabetes

Silke Schmidt | Science News | 
Too much of the bad white [fat], which stores energy, makes us obese. The brown type burns energy, helping us ...
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Dogs don’t seem to care much about human faces, counterintuitive study finds

Laura Sanders | Science News | 
Dogs’ brains aren’t especially impressed by faces, either those of other dogs, or of people, a new study suggests. People’s brains ...
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Genetic engineering reveals how Venus flytrap spots prey, shedding light on plant’s short-term ‘memory’

Curtis Segarra | Science News | 
A Venus flytrap’s short-term “memory” can last about 30 seconds. If an insect taps the plant’s sensitive hairs only once, ...
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Puberty resets the brain, giving preteens facing stress and hardship a second chance

Esther Landhuis | Science News | 
A childhood characterized by hardship, negligence or abuse can also alter the neuroendocrine system that regulates how the body responds ...
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How one person was spontaneously cured of HIV—and what that may mean in the fight against AIDS

Tina Hesman Saey | Science News | 
Twice, people infected with HIV have had levels of the virus in their bodies drop to undetectable levels after bone marrow ...
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Are facial expressions universal?

Bruce Bower | Science News | 
Faces depicted in sculptures crafted between 3,500 and 600 years ago in Mexico and Central America convey five varieties of ...
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Redrawing the line between life and brain death

Laura Sanders | Science News | 
Brain death has been a recognized concept in medicine for decades. But there’s a lot of variation in how people ...
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In the race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, ethical concerns abound

Bethany Brookshire | Science News | 
How do we ethically test it in people? Can people be forced to get the vaccine if they don’t want it? ...
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Why haven’t we been contacted by alien civilizations? Maybe because most have extinguished themselves, as we likely will

Tom Siegfried | Science News | 
For some reason, civilization is not a self-perpetuating state of affairs on this planet. And perhaps not on other planets, ...
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Ethical pros and cons of infecting healthy volunteers in quest for COVID-19 vaccine

Jonathan Lambert | Science News | 
Instead of vaccinating hundreds to thousands of people and waiting to see if they naturally catch the virus, scientists would ...
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Asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs created perfect conditions for microbial life to thrive

Carolyn Gramling | Science News | 
The massive Chicxulub crater on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula is the fingerprint of a killer, probably responsible for the destruction of ...
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‘Overly simplistic’: Women may have been more than just ‘gatherers’ in ancient times, studies suggest

Bruce Bower | Science News | 
Sexual divisions of labor characterized ancient societies, but were not as rigidly enforced as has often been assumed, [two] new ...
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‘The Idea of the Brain’: Book explores the struggle to understand the human brain

Laura Sanders | Science News | 
Neuroscientists love a good metaphor. Through the years, plumbing, telegraph wires and computers have all been enlisted to help explain ...
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Borrowing a trick from cancer cells could be key to improving organ and limb transplants

Erin Garcia de Jesus | Science News | 
To help rats adopt transplanted limbs as their own, researchers have harnessed a ruse that cancer cells use to hide ...
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Experiments on living brain tissue unearth ‘ethical quandaries’

Karen Rommelfanger, Laura Sanders | Science News | 
Live bits of brain look like any other piece of meat —  pinkish, solid chunks of neural tissue. But unlike ...
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Iraqi excavation rekindles debate over whether Neanderthals buried their dead

Bruce Bower | Science News | 
The excavation of an adult Neandertal’s partial upper-body skeleton in Iraqi Kurdistan has revived a decades-long debate over whether Neandertals intentionally buried ...
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This robotic face will wince if you hit it. How does it process pain?

Laura Sanders | Science News | 
Sensors embedded in soft, artificial skin that can detect both a gentle touch and a painful thump have been hooked ...
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Dreaming of hypoallergenic cats and how CRISPR could ‘come to the rescue’

Erika Engelhaupt | Science News | 
Given that just two genes are responsible for making cats a problem for many people, it seemed like a no-brainer ...
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Viewpoint: Booming stem cell market ‘conflates hype with reality’, damaging legitimate research

Laura Beil | Science News | 
Stem cells sold at clinics are driving what’s thought to be a $2 billion global industry. Facebook pages announce seminars ...
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‘Intrepid explorers’: Neanderthals hunted their way across thousands of miles in Europe

Bruce Bower | Science News | 
Neandertals were epic wanderers. These ancient hominids took a 3,000- to 4,000-kilometer hike from Eastern Europe to the Altai Mountains ...
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DNA from 4 ancient children shed light on diversity of humankind’s African origins

Bruce Bower | Science News | 
Four ancient youngsters, one pair from around 8,000 years ago and another from about 3,000 years ago, have opened a ...
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