The truth may be out there about UFOs, or what the government currently calls “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAPs). But finding it will require collecting data that are more rigorous than the anecdotal reports that typically fuel the controversial sightings, according to a panel of scientists, appointed by NASA to advise the agency on the topic, that held its first...

Late one night last summer, Seila Chea got an urgent call from a fisherman on the Mekong River in northeastern Cambodia. He’d hooked an endangered giant freshwater stingray—and it was a monster. Chea, project manager for the Wonders of The Mekong initiative, quickly organized a posse that sped out to the river to bargain for the creature’s life. Nearly 4 meters from snout to tail,...

Last year, Alan Kolok, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Idaho, published a study that found the incidence of cancer in counties across 11 western U.S. states was correlated with the use of farm chemicals called fumigants, which kill soil pests. The fine-grained analysis was feasible, he says, because a U.S. government database made timely, county-level statistics on pesticide use...

NASA’s JWST space telescope has observed a 10,000-kilometer-long plume of water vapor jetting into space from Saturn’s moon Enceladus—the largest spray ever detected from the icy world, which is just one-seventh the diameter of Earth’s Moon. Planetary scientists view Enceladus as a prime target in the search for extraterrestrial life because beneath its icy crust the moon...

The U.S. government has tens of millions of unused doses of messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines, regularly trashing shots as they pass their expiration dates. It’s a dismal reflection on recent vaccine uptake, but it’s also a serious roadblock for scientists testing and developing vaccines that could protect against future variants of SARS-CoV-2—and the next pandemic. Developers...

An agreement struck over the weekend between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to avoid a U.S. government default has reassured jittery financial markets. But its formula for holding federal spending flat for 2 years means that science agencies will have to compete against all other civilian programs to win any increases from Congress. Such a zero-sum...

Last year, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) delivered a stern warning to two in-house clinical researchers who had broken an important rule. They had failed to submit the results of two clinical trials they had overseen to ClinicalTrials.gov, a database meant to inform the public about human studies and their results. The reporting requirement has often been ignored, but this...

In 1961, geologists off the Pacific coast of Mexico embarked on a daring journey to a foreign land—the planet’s interior. From a ship, they aimed to drill through the thin veneer of Earth’s crust and grab a sample of the mantle, the 2900-kilometer-thick layer of dense rock that fuels volcanic eruptions and makes up most of the planet’s mass. The drill only got a couple hundred...

By specializing for catching, ingesting, and swallowing all sorts of food, tongues had dramatic impact on animal evolution

The most abundant animals on farms—and everywhere on land, in fact—are microscopic worms called nematodes. Some kinds benefit the soil, but others parasitize crops, inflicting more than $100 billion in losses worldwide each year. Although pesticides can get rid of harmful nematodes, they inflict collateral damage on other life. Now, researchers have discovered a new chemical...

PUBLIC HEALTH FDA advisers back maternal RSV shot A vaccine aims to protect infants from respiratory syncytial virus, a leading cause of infant hospitalization. JAMIE KELTER DAVIS/ THE NEW YORK TIMES /REDUX A...

It’s a classic science fiction trope: Astronauts on an interstellar journey are kept in sleek, refrigerated pods in a state of suspended animation. Although such pods remain purely fictional, scientists have pursued research into inducing a hibernation-like state in humans to lessen the damage caused by medical conditions such as heart attacks and stroke, and to reduce the stress...

It’s said that art imitates life, but painters in 19th century Denmark really took that adage to heart. The so-called Danish Golden Age of painting, which lasted from about 1800 to 1850, coincided with a particularly beer-crazed era for the nation. A new study out today in Science Advances suggests Danish artists used grains and yeast leftover from brewing to...

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged and other effective drugs were elusive, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) emerged as a lifesaving treatment. But now, 3 years later, all the approvals for COVID-19–fighting antibodies have been rescinded in the United States, as mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have left the drugs—which target parts of the original virus—ineffective....

Scientists who reflect on their racial and ethnic identities—as well as on those of their mentees—have the potential to be better mentors. And mentees of these scientists were also more likely to say their mentors were respectful of, and held space for conversations about, race and ethnicity. Those are the take-home message from a new randomized controlled trial—the first of its...

Gert-Jan Oskam lost the ability to walk in 2011 when he injured his spine in a cycling accident in China. Six years later, the Dutch man managed to take a few short steps thanks to a small array of electrodes implanted on top of his spinal cord that delivered nerve-stimulating pulses of electricity. The device allowed him to walk, but the process was stilted and sometimes frustrating....

Five years ago, when Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) began making it hard for him to walk, 7-year-old Conner Curran received a blood infusion of trillions of viruses carrying a muscle gene to replace his mutant one. Within 2 months the Connecticut boy went from crawling up stairs to “flying up,” says his mother, Jessica Curran. The family and the researchers hoped he would never...

Virologist Robert Cross’s lab is equipped to handle some of the world’s most dangerous viruses. At the Galveston National Laboratory he has worked with guinea pigs infected with Ebola virus and macaques carrying Lassa fever. What it can’t accommodate are pigs, which are common carriers of the deadly Nipah virus. “We’re not really geared to handle large animals,” says Cross,...

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is planning a small test reactor that would burn a large amount of weapons-grade uranium, according to the project’s draft environmental assessment . The experiment, to be built in a cost-sharing arrangement, would provide data for a new type of power reactor being developed by TerraPower and Southern Company Services. But the use of...

Earlier this year, U.S. regulators settled on a new strategy for COVID-19 vaccines . Like the annual flu shot, the vaccines will be updated each year based on the virus’ evolution, then rolled out in the fall. Accordingly, on 15 June, advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will weigh which strain or strains of SARS-CoV-2 should make up the next...

Fishing for Atlantic herring may seem worlds away from restrictions on power plant emissions or responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. But a case before the U.S. Supreme Court could affect all those activities and more by altering how federal agencies apply scientific expertise in carrying out their regulatory duties. On 1 May the high court agreed to hear a case brought by four...

House mice may look cute, but they’re little monsters when it comes to crops. The rodents destroy 70 million tons of rice, wheat, and maize each year by devouring and infesting stored grain. They also dig up and eat the seeds farmers have planted. Humans have been locked in a battle with these pests for millennia, using everything from cats to poisons. A new study may have...

In the dead of night, 200 bloodthirsty creatures make their way through a tented mesh arena the size of an ice rink. Scientists study them from afar, pumping in air scented with the aroma of human prey. They’re hoping to reveal just what triggers these deadly predators. This isn’t the setup for an upcoming zombie movie. “It’s the world’s largest multichoice smell test...

Ketamine is a powerful anesthetic and sometimes recreational drug that causes people to feel dissociated from their own bodies. Recent studies suggest the drug may help treat people with depression who have tried more conventional treatments without success. But there are major questions about what makes it work. Is it the weird dissociative experience? Some molecular effect on the brain?...