Since early in the pandemic, researchers and physicians have known all too well that COVID-19 can affect various organs, such as the brain, lungs, heart, and kidneys. But how long does the damage linger, and what does it mean for a patient’s recovery? Imaging studies investigating long-term effects of COVID-19 have often focused on one organ at a time, limiting...

When Ryo Minemizu, a professional underwater photographer, posted photos of an elegant ladybug-size flittering creature off Okinawa, Japan, in 2018, biologists were baffled . It wasn’t a worm, a mollusk, or a crustacean. What was it? No one knew. One of those intrigued was Igor Adameyko, a developmental neurobiologist at the Medical University of...

NASA’s audacious Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission has serious technical flaws and “unrealistic” assumptions about its budget and timetable, an independent review found in a report released yesterday . Originally estimated to cost some $4 billion, the reviewers found that NASA’s share of the mission could end up costing between $8 billion to $11 billion,...

When it comes to learned behavior, even the simplest minds are capable of advanced thought. The Caribbean box jellyfish ( Tripedalia cystophora ), which doesn’t even have a brain, can alter its behavior based on past experiences, new research reveals. Scientists believe the creature uses this learning ability along with its astoundingly complex visual system to navigate...

Think “cowboy,” and you might picture John Wayne riding herd across the U.S. West. But the first cowboys lived in Mexico and the Caribbean, and most of them were Black . That’s the conclusion of a recent analysis of DNA from 400-year-old cow bones excavated on the island of Hispaniola and at sites in Mexico. The work, published in Scientific Reports...

For decades, the Mexican government has been fighting a losing war against dozens of cartels involved in drug trading, human trafficking, extortion, and other crimes. Even though thousands of cartel members land in prison each year, cartel-related violence has continued to grow: The number of homicides resulting from the organizations fighting one another—including thousands of innocent...

CONSERVATION Popular biodiversity app to expand The nonprofit that runs iNaturalist, a popular app and website for identifying species, has received a $10 million grant to expand. The funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, announced last week, will allow iNaturalist—whose website is one of the largest generators of crowd-sourced...

Mysterious patches of fertile black soil pepper the verdant Amazon rainforest. They sit in stark contrast with the reddish, eroded soil that dominates the basin. Researchers have long thought this Amazonian dark earth—or terra preta —was created by pre-Hispanic Indigenous civilizations, which have inhabited the region for millennia, but it wasn’t clear how. Now, a...

How much stuff do people need to lead a decent life? It’s a hard, and subjective, question. But researchers have now estimated for the first time what it takes, quantitatively speaking, to keep one person out of abject poverty : about 6 tons per year of food, fuel, clothing, and other supplies, researchers report this month in Environmental Science &...