Some Families May Be Flipping a Weighted Coin on Baby Sex
In a huge dataset, some families leaned one way, boys or girls, again and again. Two genes tagged along. Why they matter, the researchers say, is an open question.
Medicine & Health
Quantum Mechanics Meets Your Lithium Prescription
Rats given one version of lithium calmed down more than rats given the other. The gap may come down to a quantum property of a single atom's nucleus.
A Pig Named Wilma Kept a Man Alive for 271 Days
The kidney failed in the end, and nobody is treating that as a defeat. What a borrowed organ was for turns out to matter more than how long it lasted.
That Belly Button Stink Might Be Trying to Tell You Something
Your body has been emitting a chemical record of your health all along. A laser and a cotton swab may finally be able to read it.
The Odd Couple Living in Your Skull
Jellyfish have two nervous systems at opposite ends of their bodies. Ours may be the same arrangement, just packed tighter.
Your Brain Has Been Lying to You in Complete Sentences
Language might not be how your brain thinks. It might just be how it reports back. So what exactly is doing the reasoning?
A Mouse's Six Weeks in Space Showed Up in Her Grandchildren
Six weeks in orbit left the mother mice looking fine. The changes turned up in their daughters, and some were still there a generation later.
A Battery You Swallow Does Its Job, Then Disappears
Doctors work hard to get swallowed batteries back out. This one is designed to be swallowed, and a few weeks later there's nothing left to retrieve.
A Lung Transplant Came With An Allergy
A transplanted lung brought its previous owner's food issue along for the ride.
The Color Missing From Your LED Bulbs Completely Prevented Nearsightedness in Animal Tests
Standard LEDs leave out a wavelength abundant in sunlight. In tree shrews, adding it back changed what happened to their developing eyes.
DNA From a Single Male Can Create Both Mom and Dad
One male genetic sample can now take two very different reproductive paths. The second path shouldn't exist.
The Muscle We Thought Could Not Mend
Heart muscle lost in a heart attack was supposed to be gone for good. Living human tissue shows the heart has another response.
E. coli Remembers the Hard Times. Its Grandchildren Do Too.
The memory isn't stored in a brain. It's inherited. Granddaughter cells behave differently because of stress their ancestors survived. What does that mean for antibiotic treatment?
Resistant PTSD May Have Met Its Match in Mushrooms
The improvement began before the first dose. Then the symptoms dropped much further. A small trial is raising a surprisingly complicated question about what makes psychedelic therapy work.
AI Sees Colors That Aren't There
A black-and-white spinning disk has fooled human eyes for generations. Now a predictive network is producing the same illusion, and its training history may explain why.
More Than Half the Memory Connections Disappeared. The Memories Didn't.
The brain can lose more than half its memory-related connections and still remember. What got preserved, and why, is the part science hasn't figured out yet.
A Pill Full of Bacteria Could Read Your Blood Sugar
Engineered gut bacteria that sense rising blood sugar and manufacture a drug on demand. It worked in monkeys. Humans are the open question.
Mammals Have One Antibody System. Bats Didn't Get the Memo.
Bats carry Ebola, coronaviruses and worse without breaking a sweat. Turns out they may have been running a completely different immune system.