Earlier this year, the developer of a promising antibody designed to slow Alzheimer’s disease strengthened a key warning given to participants in an ongoing trial of the experimental drug. Taking the antibody alongside blood clot medications, the Japanese biotech company Eisai cautioned, increases the risk of possibly fatal brain hemorrhages. That revision of its informed consent form,...

The $1.7 trillion spending package that Congress passed on 23 December does more than fund the entire U.S. government in 2023. Senators and members of the House of Representatives from both parties also used it to funnel $15 billion to 7200 projects in their districts that federal funding agencies never requested. The projects include new research facilities and academic...

Overfishing may put the queen conch—a large marine snail known for its showy shell and delectable flesh—on the path to extinction, U.S. government researchers concluded earlier this year after an extensive review of the species. Federal officials are now considering whether to list the Caribbean species as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, having wrapped up collecting...

Lethally sharp projectile points found along the banks of a river in southwestern Idaho, dated to nearly 16,000 years ago according to a study published today , could represent the oldest evidence of the first tool technology brought to the Americas. Apparently deposited into a series of shallow pits by an ancient group of hunter-gatherers, the points are examples...

They’re called glass frogs for a reason. Flip the paperclip-size amphibians over, and you’ll see their bones, innards, and beating heart through a translucent belly. Now, scientists have figured out how some of these tiny frogs, which reside in tropical forests throughout Central and South America, keep their skin so clear—they divert their blood into their livers to help...

PUBLIC HEALTH Ebola vaccine trial on hold A planned clinical trial of vaccines against the Sudan ebolavirus likely will not go forward, after traditional containment methods appear to have stamped out the outbreak of Ebola that surfaced in Uganda on 20 September. An international effort moved at record speed to deliver two experimental vaccines...

Scientists are cautiously optimistic about the new global biodiversity pact that emerged from down-to-the-wire negotiations in Montreal this week. Given the vast amount of disputed text at the start of the conference—spanning 265 pages—observers were surprised and delighted that 190 countries managed to beat the clock on Monday and release a final agreement that sets a wide range of...

Broken, charred and still crusted with nearly 8000-year-old food, the remnants of ancient pottery found across northern Eurasia wouldn’t be mistaken for fine china. But the advent of this durable technology—used to cook and store abundant plant and animal resources—was a huge step forward for hunter-gatherers in this part of the globe. It was also home-grown, new research suggests....

And another one bites the dust. The end has come for NASA’s InSight mission, a Mars lander that for more than 4 years listened for ground shaking that illuminates the structure of the planet’s interior, the agency announced yesterday. The lander last communicated with Earth on 15 December. NASA could not reach it in two follow-up attempts, leading the...

As enthusiasm mounts for a new experimental antibody that appears to slow cognitive decline in some Alzheimer’s patients, a third death linked to the drug during its clinical testing may amplify concerns about its safety. Science has obtained medical records showing a 79-year-old Florida woman participating in an ongoing trial of the antibody died in mid-September after...

In the clear light of day, the Eurasian woodcock doesn’t stand out. Reddish brown feathers help the bird blend in with forest underbrush to avoid predators. But at dawn and dusk, when males of the species swoop and dart in the pale luminance to attract a mate, they really shine. Now, researchers say their stark white tail feathers are the brightest plumage ever measured on a bird....

By growing an unusual tentacled microbe in the lab, microbiologists may have taken a big step toward resolving the earliest branches on the tree of life and unraveling one of its great mysteries: how the complex cells that make up the human body—and all plants, animals, and many single-celled organisms—first came to be. Such microbes, called Asgard archaea, have previously been...

A gift from their mothers might reenergize the cells of children who carry faulty mitochondria , the organelles that serve as cells’ power plants. A research team is testing a strategy that involves soaking patients’ blood cells in a broth of healthy mitochondria from their mothers and then reinfusing them. Early signs suggest the intervention is safe and may improve...

Congress did the best it could this week for basic research, unveiling a belated $1.7 trillion spending bill that keeps the U.S. government running for the next 9 months. But legislators’ desire to increase the defense budget kept them from delivering a major promised boost for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and held several other civilian agencies to small increases....

CHICAGO— Once upon a time, scientists believe, Mars was far from today’s cold, inhospitable desert. Rivers carved canyons, lakes filled craters, and a magnetic field may have fended off space radiation, keeping it from eating away the atmospheric moisture. As the martian interior cooled, leading theories hold, its magnetic field died out, leaving the atmosphere undefended...

A paper published earlier this month by Science claiming the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 arose gradually, across a broad area of Africa , before it was detected was retracted today by its authors. In a retraction notice , all 87 researchers involved in the paper acknowledged that crucial genome sequences on which the study based its...

When a Japanese entomologist got stung by a male wasp earlier this year, she was shocked. Only female wasps and bees should be able to deliver such a painful prick, as their venom-bearing stingers are modified egg-laying organs known as ovipositors. Males are generally considered harmless. After taking a closer look at the mason wasp ( Anterhynchium gibbifrons )...

Striking graduate students across the University of California system, shown here at UC Irvine, are voting on a tentative agreement this week. Allen J. Schaben/ Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Five weeks into a strike that disrupted University of California (UC) campuses, the unions representing graduate student...

For decades, peer reviewing technical manuscripts before they were published in a journal was a regular duty for senior scientists. But James Fraser, a structural biologist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), says he hasn’t reviewed a paper for a journal in years. Instead, Fraser and members of his lab focus on reviewing preprint studies that are posted online...

The balmy, shallow waters of Apalachicola Bay, off Florida’s panhandle, supply about 10% of U.S. oysters. But the industry has declined in recent years, in part because the bay is warming and its waters are acidifying because of rising carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) levels. Things got so bad that in 2020, the state banned oyster harvesting for 5 years. Soon afterward, state...

Bridget Trogden thought she knew the drill for winning a research grant: Write a proposal with her colleagues at Clemson University, where she is a professor of engineering and science education; submit it to a funder; and then pray it beats out hundreds of worthy competitors for a handful of awards. So Trogden was stunned when the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), one of...

A U.S. federal judge has ruled against the nation’s largest biomedical agency in a long-running battle over the fate of dozens of former research chimpanzees. On Tuesday, a Maryland court declared that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) violated federal law by not moving the animals out of biomedical facilities to a government sanctuary. The ruling could force the agency to...

Reinforcing the gulf between Democrats and Republicans on federal responses to COVID-19, a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives today issued two starkly different reports assessing the performance of U.S. intelligence agencies early in the pandemic. While neither offers much new information, one focuses on how agencies tracked the first days of the outbreak in Wuhan, China,...

CONSERVATION Life can thrive in a partially logged forest, study finds Forest plants and animals can thrive in selectively logged areas , calling into question their designation as degraded ecosystems, a study in Malaysia has found. An international team of researchers studied differences among an intact old forest, partly...