For decades, theoretical particle physicists have struggled with vexing calculus problems called Feynman integrals. They are central to every calculation they make—from predicting how magnetic a particle called the muon should be , to estimating the rate at which Higgs bosons should emerge at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Now, theorists have found a way...

Stanford University has launched an investigation of possible research misconduct in several papers co-authored many years ago by its president, neuroscientist Marc Tessier-Lavigne, after the school’s student newspaper raised questions about potentially manipulated images in the articles, published long before he came to the school. The university “will assess...

On 2 October, Haiti announced that cholera had returned to the country . Memories from the previous epidemic, which killed close to 10,000 Haitians between 2010 and 2019, are still raw; now, with violent gangs fighting for control over the country and the health system in disarray, things could again get very bad. A few days later, Lebanon reported its first...

A tiny broken bone, misidentified for decades, has upended scientists’ view of bird evolution. For nearly 200 years, zoologists have divided birds into two categories: those with mobile joints in their upper jaw that allow their upper beak to move, and a much smaller group, including ostriches and emus, with a fused upper palate that gives them a less agile upper beak. This fused...

Ancient DNA from German cemetery suggests timing of population bottleneck for today’s largest Jewish group

Peshkova/iStock The University of Michigan’s biomedical Ph.D. program was a lonely outlier in 2017 when it announced it would stop asking applicants to submit scores for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Test . At the time, the standardized exam was a nearly universal requirement for Ph.D. programs at U.S. universities. But...

Academic workers across the University of California (UC) system—including at UC Los Angeles, shown here—have been on strike since 14 November. Gary Coronado/ Los Angeles Times via Getty Images After 2 weeks of strikes and negotiating involving thousands of early career researchers across the University of...

Some parents name their babies after celebrities, others, for revered ancestors. But enjoyable weather can influence a parent’s choice as well, an analysis of hundreds of millions of baby names in the United States has shown. Names such as April and Autumn show up more in states where those times of year are most beautiful, the new study concludes. The new study persuades Ruth...

After repeated delays and the loss of its Russian-built rockets, Europe’s ExoMars rover is go for launch again, in 2028, government ministers agreed last week. The rover was due to set off for the Red Planet in September on a Russian Proton rocket and land on a Russian-built craft, until the European Space Agency (ESA) cut ties with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. At a budget...

A 65-year-old woman who was receiving a promising experimental treatment to slow the cognitive decline caused by her early Alzheimer’s disease recently died from a massive brain hemorrhage that some researchers link to the drug. The clinical trial death, described in an unpublished case report Science has obtained, is the second thought to be associated with the...

Toxoplasma gondii is sometimes called the “mind control” parasite: It can infect the brains of animals and mess with their behavior in ways that may kill the host but help ensure the parasite’s spread. But now, researchers have found that infected wolves may actually benefit from those mind-altering tricks. A Toxoplasma infection, they found, makes wolves...

Last week, Indian pediatrician Soumya Swaminathan announced on Twitter that she is leaving her post as chief scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO) at the end of this month. She plans to return to India to work on public health there. Swaminathan, 63, joined WHO in 2017 and in March 2019 was named the agency’s first chief scientist, a position created...

The celebrated gene-editing tool CRISPR started out as a bacterial defense against invading viruses. But it turns out the intended targets have stolen CRISPR for their own arsenals. A new study reveals that thousands of the bacteria-attacking viruses known as bacteriophages (phages, for short) contain the CRISPR system’s genetic sequences, suggesting they may deploy them against rival...

The indictment of several members of an alleged international monkey smuggling ring is sending ripples through the U.S. biomedical community. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charged two Cambodian wildlife officials and several members of a Hong Kong-based primate supply company with illegally exporting hundreds—and potentially more than 2000— cynomolgus...

Diplomacy, many a statesperson has argued, is an art: one that requires not just strategy, but also intuition, persuasion, and even subterfuge—human skills that have long been off-limits to even the most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) approaches. Now, an AI algorithm from the company Meta has shown it can beat many humans in the board game Diplomacy, which requires both strategic...

The world is set to get a lot greener over the next 10 years. The United Nations has designated 2021–30 the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and many countries, with help from donors, have launched ambitious programs to restore forests in places where they were chopped down or degraded. At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt last week, the European Union and 26 nations...

Once a medical student there, a Science reporter returns to find notable gains—and big challenges

LUNAR SCIENCE Science probes head for Moon orbit After years of delay, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocketed toward the Moon last week, and data indicate its scientific payloads are working as planned. The rocket is the agency’s most powerful since the Apollo-era Saturn V, and the launch marks the first orbital flight on a NASA rocket since...

The 10-year-old gene-editing tool known as CRISPR is indispensable for engineering plants, tailoring lab animals, and probing basic biology. But there’s a caveat when it is used to tweak human genes: Unlike lab mice, which are usually inbred and genetically identical, people’s genomes differ individually and by ancestry. These ancestry differences mean CRISPR doesn’t always...

With its hands and feet bound, a spider monkey went to its grave around 300 C.E., buried alive among sumptuous grave goods in the great city of Teotihuacan in central Mexico. A recent study of its bones suggests the animal may have been a diplomatic gift from the Maya, who lived far to the east, offering a peek at geopolitics in Mesoamerica a century before the two great powers clashed....

In a decision conservation groups called historic, an intergovernmental organization has taken a significant step toward regulating the trade of nearly 100 species of sharks and rays , most of which are imperiled from overfishing. A committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) last week voted to oversee exports of...

Since NASA’s Terra satellite launched in 1999, it has seen a world utterly transformed. Surface temperatures have risen half a degree. Sea levels have climbed 80 millimeters higher. Plants have expanded across an area as big as the Amazon rainforest. Through it all, Terra and two other satellites—Aqua, launched in 2002, and Aura, in 2004—served as the foremost sentinels of a...

NASA said today a search of government archives supports its decision to keep the name of its former administrator, James Webb, on its flagship space telescope. Many astronomers had urged NASA to rename the telescope following accusations that Webb participated in discrimination and firing of LGBTQ+ staff from the U.S. federal workforce in the 1950s and ’60s. In an...

Triple threat. Tripledemic. A viral perfect storm. These frightening phrases have dominated recent headlines as some health officials, clinicians, and scientists forecast that SARS-CoV-2, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) could surge at the same time in Northern Hemisphere locales that have relaxed masking, social distancing, and other COVID-19 precautions. But a...