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This story is part of a special package being published this week about the barriers Black physicists face and potential models for change. Read more C. Smith/Science Roy Clarke missed the freewheeling atmosphere of the legendary Bell Telephone Laboratories after he left Bell to join the physics faculty at the University of Michigan (UM), Ann … Read more
Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has unleashed an outpouring of condemnation from scientists and research organizations worldwide. Some organizations in Western nations have moved to quickly sever links with Russia—cutting off funding and resources and ending collaborations with Russian scientists. And from Mauritius to Latvia, national science academies and groups of researchers have issued statements … Read more
Scientists discovered remnants of an Old Stone Age culture, less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of Beijing, where ancient hominins used a reddish pigment called ochre and crafted tiny, blade-like tools from stone. The archaeological site, called Xiamabei, offers a rare glimpse into the life of Homo sapiens and now-extinct human relatives who inhabited the region some … Read more
How does an animal as big as a semitruck move around? That’s a question scientists have long asked about sauropods, the largest known dinosaurs, which may have weighed as much as 70 tons. Did they walk like a giraffe, picking up their two left and right legs in a dignified march? Or like an elephant, … Read more
Some 40,000 years ago, a small group of foragers parked themselves on a riverbank in what is now northeastern China. Some split pebbles and bones to make small tools while others made a fire. And at least one experienced craftsperson concentrated on the primary task: grinding red, purple, and gray chunks of ochre into a … Read more
A new telescope taking on the task of staring at the Sun has delivered incredible new images of solar activity. The US National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope commenced science operations for the first time on Wednesday 23 February 2022. It’s the largest solar telescope in the world, and its high-resolution observations of … Read more
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. government is revisiting its oversight of experiments that involve modifying pathogens in ways that might make them more harmful to people. Yesterday, White House officials and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) asked an expert advisory board to undertake a swift, broad review of the agency’s … Read more
China’s aggressive “zero COVID” strategy has served it remarkably well. The country has reported fewer than 154,000 cases and 5200 deaths from COVID-19 so far, a tiny fraction of the figures in the United States. But as the highly transmissible Omicron variant seeps into the country and the social and economic costs of the zero … Read more
This story is part of a special package being published this week about the barriers Black physicists face and potential models for change. Read more C. Smith/Science Apriel Hodari has spent many years studying how to improve training and reduce inequity in the scientific workforce. That research has brought her face to face with “the … Read more
The first team to disable a disease gene directly in a person through an infusion of the genome editor CRISPR reported yesterday that levels of the toxic protein made by the gene dropped as much as 93% for up to 1 year. The researchers hope the long-term reduction means patients in the clinical trial will … Read more