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21,064 articles from ScienceNOW

Have scientists finally made sense of Hawking’s famous formula for disorder in a black hole?

Fifty years ago, famed physicist Stephen Hawking wrote down an equation that predicts that a black hole has entropy, an attribute typically associated with the disordered jumbling of atoms and molecules in material. The arguments for black hole entropy were indirect, however, and no one had derived the famous equation from the fundamental definition of entropy—at least not for realistic...


WEDNESDAY 27. MARCH 2024


Black hole at center of Milky Way may be blasting out a jet

The supermassive black holes at the centers of many galaxies generate powerful jets, blasting particles thousands of light-years into space. This new image of the Milky Way’s black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), suggests it may have one, too, but perhaps of a more modest nature. The image—taken with polarized light—was released today by the Event Horizon...

Bird flu discovered in U.S. dairy cows is ‘disturbing’

The bird flu virus that has wreaked havoc around the world appears to have surfaced in U.S. dairy cows, the first time this viral subtype has been documented in any cattle. Three U.S. states—Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico—on 25 March reported cows sickened with what scientists are presuming is the same H5N1 strain of influenza that has killed hundreds of millions of poultry and wild...


TUESDAY 26. MARCH 2024


Genetically engineered marmosets promise insight into early stages of Parkinson’s

By the time a person shows symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, neurons in a part of their brain key to movement have already quietly died. To learn how this process unfolds, identify warning signs, and test treatments, researchers have long wanted an animal model of the disease’s early stages. Now, they may have one: a cohort of transgenic marmosets, described at a conference on...

Smallpox may be gone but U.S. should better prepare for its return, report says

Nearly 5 decades after the last documented case, smallpox remains the only human disease that has been officially eradicated. But a new report concludes that the United States can do much to strengthen its ability to respond if the dreaded disease resurfaces, whether naturally, through a lab “leak” of the responsible virus, or from an act of terrorism. The...


MONDAY 25. MARCH 2024


Long-lasting, injectable HIV prevention drug set for “aggressive” roll-out in Africa

Tools to fight HIV tend to come late to sub-Saharan Africa, the region hardest hit by the epidemic. After powerful, lifesaving cocktails of HIV drugs came to market in 1996, it took 7 years before they began to reach large numbers of people living with the virus there. When pills to prevent, rather than treat, HIV infection were introduced in 2012—a strategy known as pre-exposure...

South Korea to join the European Union’s research funding program

The European Commission announced today that South Korea will join Horizon Europe, as the 7-year, €95.5 billion ($104 billion) research funding program continues to expand far beyond the continent. South Korea will be the first East Asian country to “associate to” Horizon Europe, paying into the program so that the nation’s researchers can apply for and lead Horizon...

Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

Gorodenkoff/Getty Images New data released by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) reveal a sharp drop in the number of U.S. citizens working as postdocs, especially in the biological and biomedical sciences. The trend underscores concerns that the academic community is facing a postdoc shortage and that early-career scientists are...

‘After you!’ A female bird’s flutter conveys a polite message to her mate

A wave goodbye. A bow. A thumbs-up. Human culture is full of gestures that can convey more than words ever could. Now, scientists have observed a pair of chivalrous birds joining the conversation. Video taken in Nagano, Japan, shows two Japanese tits ( Parus minor ) as they return to their nest inside a birdhouse with food for their young. The female lands on a...


FRIDAY 22. MARCH 2024


For first time in a century, India's states count politically sensitive caste membership

The more than 1 billion Hindus living in India belong to more than 4000 historical castes, a hereditary identity that shapes social and economic status and mobility. But it has been almost a century since caste membership was counted. India’s federal government, citing logistical and political reasons, has been reluctant to conduct another survey. Now, states are taking things into...


THURSDAY 21. MARCH 2024


Final NIH budget for 2024 is essentially flat

Congress has given the National Institutes of Health (NIH) a 0.6% increase, to $47.1 billion, in a final 2024 spending bill that lawmakers are expected to approve in time to avert a partial government shutdown this weekend. And several policy directives opposed by researchers have been stripped from the legislation. The tiny, $300 million bump is only one-third of the $920...

Survey suggests Trump’s attacks boosted public trust in science

Public trust in scientists rose in the United States during the presidency of Donald Trump, a new study finds, despite his repeated attacks on individual scientists and federal research agencies. The increase occurred across the political spectrum and more than offset a simultaneous rise in mistrust. Survey respondents were aware of negative statements that Trump and...

RNA deserves its own massive counterpart to the human genome project, researchers argue

In 2021, as a new kind of vaccine began to protect millions from COVID-19, many people heard about messenger RNA (mRNA) for the first time since high school biology. The molecule, which transfers DNA’s code out of a cell’s nucleus to guide protein production, is just one of several types of RNA that profoundly affect how cells function. Now, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences,...


WEDNESDAY 20. MARCH 2024


Number of known moonquakes tripled with discovery in Apollo archive

THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS— The Moon suddenly seems more alive. From 1969 to 1977, seismometers left on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts detected thousands of distinctive “moonquakes.” Now, half a century later, a new analysis has cut through the noise in the old data and nearly tripled the number of moonquakes, adding more than 22,000 new quakes to 13,000 previously...

Pressure grows to ditch controversial rodent test in depression studies

For the past few decades, scientists studying candidate antidepressant drugs have had a convenient animal test: how long a rodent dropped in water keeps swimming. Invented in 1977 , the forced swim test (FST) hinged on the idea that a depressed animal would give up quickly. It seemed to work: Antidepressants and electroconvulsive therapy often made the animal try harder....

‘Jelly in the skull’: Ancient brains are preserved more often than you think

In 1982, construction workers uncovered dozens of 8000-year-old human skeletons in a pond on the edge of Titusville, Florida. Archaeologists excavating the waterlogged site—now known as Windover Archeological Site—were shocked to discover intact brain tissue inside 91 of the skulls, with some brains intact enough to identify contours and extract ancient DNA. University of...


TUESDAY 19. MARCH 2024


A data duel over U.S. maternal mortality

Experts agree that the U.S. maternal mortality rate is unacceptably high. And year after year of data show that disadvantaged groups, particularly Black and Native American women, die at even higher rates than people in the United States overall during pregnancy and childbirth. But controversy broke out last week over just how bad the situation is, when a paper by academic...

Can quantum tech give telescopes sharper vision?

When the Extremely Large Telescope is completed in Chile in a few years’ time, its 39-meter mirror will be larger than those of all earlier research telescopes added together. Yet even this titan will see planets around nearby stars as single points of light, with no discernible detail. What’s an astronomer to do? At a meeting last week organized by NOIRLab, the U.S. national...

Possible TikTok ban has U.S. science communicators on edge

For biologist Brooke Fitzwater, a doctoral student at the University of Alabama, the social media platform TikTok has become a key tool for sharing her knowledge of marine biology with some 250,000 followers. Her short, humorous videos on everything from whale sharks to zombie worms have attracted up to 2.1 million views. “TikTok has been an unparalleled way for me to...


MONDAY 18. MARCH 2024


NASA’s x-ray telescope faces a long goodbye

The end is nigh for NASA’s nearly 25-year-old Chandra X-ray Observatory. Funding for the space telescope was slashed last week in President Joe Biden’s budget request, which calls for winding the mission down over several years. Astronomers are up in arms over the announcement. They argue that the telescope is as productive as ever and remains a cornerstone of U.S....

West Virginia opens the door to teaching intelligent design

In 2005, then–U.S. District Court Judge John Jones ruled that intelligent design (ID)—the idea that life is too complex to have evolved without nudging from supernatural forces—cannot be taught in public school biology courses because it is not a scientific theory. This month, the West Virginia legislature found a workaround, and passed a bill that doesn’t name ID but will...

Mystery illness among U.S. diplomats did not cause permanent brain damage

For several years, dozens of U.S. diplomats and intelligence agents have fallen ill with a perplexing array of symptoms that some politicians, intelligence analysts, and physicians have speculated may have been triggered by a so-called directed-energy weapon. Whatever caused these anomalous health incidents (AHIs), as the cases have been labeled by the U.S. government, it did not leave...


FRIDAY 15. MARCH 2024


‘Lab-leak’ proponents at Rutgers accused of defaming and intimidating COVID-19 origin researchers

Fraudsters. Liars. Perjurers. Felons. Grifters. Stooges. Imbeciles. Murderers. When it comes to describing scientists whose peer-reviewed studies suggest the COVID-19 virus made a natural jump from animals to humans, molecular biologist Richard Ebright and microbiologist Bryce Nickels have used some very harsh language. On X (formerly Twitter), where the two scientists from Rutgers...

A treaty to prepare the world for the next pandemic hangs in the balance

“Me first”—that’s how Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO), described the wealthy world’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic when he kicked off negotiations for a global “pandemic treaty” in December 2021. Even before vaccines had proved safe and effective, rich countries had purchased enough doses to cover their entire population several...

Department of Energy’s science chief announces her unexpected departure

After 22 months on the job, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, director of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science, is stepping down. Yesterday Berhe sent a letter to the office’s 815 employees saying her last day would be 28 March. With a budget of $8.2 billion, the office is the United States’s single largest funder of the physical sciences. Berhe, who was born in...

Honesty researcher committed research misconduct, according to newly unsealed Harvard report

Honesty researcher Francesca Gino “committed research misconduct intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly,” according to an investigation completed last year by the Harvard Business School(HBS) that was publicly released this week as part of Gino’s ongoing lawsuit against the university. On Tuesday, despite objections from Gino, a judge granted Harvard’s motion to unseal...

Watch out! This colorful bird raises a nest of cannibals

It might seem wasteful, but many birds lay more eggs than will successfully hatch. Scientists have long believed these extra eggs represent a form of insurance, ensuring that at least some offspring ultimately leave the nest. But for the Eurasian hoopoe—known for its showy orange crest and the whooping cry that gives the bird its name—a new study suggests these extra eggs exist for a...


THURSDAY 14. MARCH 2024


Analysis: How NSF’s budget got hammered

Two summers ago, officials at the National Science Foundation (NSF) had good reason to anticipate years of healthy budget increases for the basic research agency. In August 2022, President Joe Biden had signed the CHIPS and Science Act, landmark legislation to revive the U.S. semiconductor industry that included a promise to more than double NSF’s budget, to $18.9 billion, by...

‘Cold blob’ of Arctic meltwater may be causing European heat waves

Global warming disrupts weather in many ways, but Europe’s string of record-breaking hot and dry summers has defied an easy link to climate change. Climate models do show Europe warming faster than the rest of the planet , but the recent scorchers were triggered by peculiar weather conditions: masses of hot, dry air parked over the continent , blocking...

We ‘baby talk’ our dogs. So why don’t we ‘baby face’ them?

“Who’s so cute? Yes you are. You are so cute!” Baby talk sounds pretty similar, whether we’re cooing to our infants or our dogs. We pitch our voices high and use many of the same phrases. But a new study has spotted a crucial difference: When baby talking our tots, our faces tend to be overly expressive—wide-open eyes, high eyebrows, and exaggerated smiles. With...

On its third try, Starship rocket flies through space but fails during re-entry

An hour after sunrise this morning, a roaring steel titan more than 120 meters tall ascended from South Texas over the Gulf of Mexico: SpaceX’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. This launch, the rocket’s third full test flight, wasn’t perfect and ended with Starship’s upper stage breaking apart during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. However,...