For nearly 60 years, hormonal contraceptives have freed women from their own biology, giving them autonomy over decisions about if, when, and how to start a family. But no form of hormonal birth control—pill, patch, ring, IUD—is 100 percent effective. Why that is, no one knows exactly. Now new research suggests that some of these…
NASA just parked its InSight lander on Mars. Yes, Mars. This is a pretty big deal since quite a few Mars missions didn't make it. It's no wonder I get super excited about missions to Mars. For this particular mission, the lander, protected by a heat shield, used the Mars atmosphere to slow down. After…
You might know wasps for their ability to brainwash cockroaches or inflict one of the most painful stings on Earth—one so powerful that the actual scientific advice to victims is to just lie down and scream until it passes. Lesser-known is the wasp’s superlative ability to carry loads that are unexpectedly heavy given the creature’s…
As far as plant names go, the sleepy plant—or shy plant, or shameplant, known more formally as Mimosa pudica—is hard to beat. Touch one of its leaves and it curls up like it’s embarrassed, the leaflets folding in on each other. It’s hypnotic and, well, kind of a surprising response for an organism without a…
Click:Chlorine tablets supplier at discount In a chilly warehouse just outside of Boston, the brute toils away. It’s 600 pounds of orange and black metal and whirring motors, a massive robotic arm that picks up car parts and places them on a table. Like its ancestors have done for decades, this industrial robot does the…
This Sunday, the subreddit /r/superbowl will host a gathering of hoo-ligans. They’ll be fans of the Nocturnal Flying League. Real birds of a feather. Starting at 6 pm ET, the Superb Owl community will kick off an Ask Me Anything with biologist James Duncan, who has spent his entire adult life studying owls and a…
Science hasn’t been giving us a tremendous amount of good news these days. We’re speeding toward climate catastrophe, for one. We’ve screwed up the environment so badly, it’s hard to even call it an environment anymore. And that’s coming back to bite (or sting) us: Bee populations, which we rely on to pollinate our crops,…
For almost a decade, NASA hasn't had a satellite watching the planet's melting sea ice. That's slated to change with tomorrow's planned launch of the $1 billion ICESat-2 satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California. Once it settles into orbit 310 miles above the Earth, the satellite will start collecting data using a specially…
Michaela Cordova, a research associate and lab manager at Oregon Health and Science University, begins by “de-metaling”: removing rings, watches, gadgets and other sources of metal, double-checking her pockets for overlooked objects that could, in her words, “fly in.” Then she enters the scanning room, raises and lowers the bed, and waves a head coil…
Editor’s note, 11/14/18: The journal Nature is reviewing corrections to the study outlined in this story. They are related to the uncertainty in the authors’ measurements. We will update this story with new figures when they become available. The story appears below in its original form. If you ever meet a climate scientist, give them…