Feb 06 How to teach a honeybee to do math By Vicky Stein Despite their “miniature brains,” honeybees can harness both long-term rules and short-term memory in order to solve math problems. Continue reading
Jan 31 Why the northern and southern lights don’t always look identical By Vicky Stein On a clear night, people near the poles might see colorful light wafting across the sky. New research could explain why these auroras don't look the same to everyone . Continue reading
Jan 31 Trump’s tweets about the polar vortex could be a warmup for 2020 By Nsikan Akpan Here’s why global warming can make the winter more severe, and politics more divisive. Continue reading
Jan 24 How conservative ‘supersharers’ drove fake news in the 2016 election By Vicky Stein Silver lining: That means most people were not being inundated with fake news. Continue reading
Jan 17 How the shutdown might end, according to game theory By Nsikan Akpan We can find some clues to how the shutdown might end in game theory, which uses math to map out how players and their strategies evolve in the real world. Continue reading
Jan 16 300 million years ago, our ancestors walked tall. This robot shows you how By Vicky Stein The fictional Sherlock Holmes could read footprints — in soil, snow, carpet, dust and even blood. Researchers today are similarly using tracks caught in stone — plus a robot — to recreate a creature that lived 300 million years ago. Continue reading
Jan 10 Why these sea slugs look so much like David Bowie By Vicky Stein By drawing comparisons between sea slugs and Ziggy Stardust, the Bowiebranchia blog exposes the wild, beautiful and competitive evolution of both. Continue reading
Jan 09 Watch 3:42 With the government shutdown, American scientific progress is disrupted Even scientists who don’t work for the government, but receive federal money for research and grants, are among the hundreds of thousands of Americans affected by the government shutdown, now in its 19th day. That means important work and research… Continue watching
Jan 04 How your brain stops you from taking climate change seriously By Nsikan Akpan ...and how to fix it. Continue reading
Jan 03 Watch 6:54 What China hopes to gain from unprecedented lunar mission China has become the first country to land a probe on the far side of the moon, in territory previously untouched. The move signals China’s intent to broaden space exploration for purposes of both military achievement and scientific discovery. Miles… Continue watching