Latest Articles
Scientists Win Nobel Prize for Discovering the Hepatitis C Virus
Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles Rice were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the cause of a major liver disease.
Reasons Revealed for the Brain’s Elastic Sense of Time
New research finds that the subjective experience of time is linked to learning, thwarted expectations and neural fatigue.
‘Zombie’ Microbes Redefine Life’s Energy Limits
A new model shows that the denizens of a vast, ancient biome beneath the seafloor use barely enough energy to stay alive — and broadens understanding of what life can look like.
What Is an Individual? Biology Seeks Clues in Information Theory.
To recognize strange extraterrestrial life and solve biological mysteries on this planet, scientists are searching for an objective definition for life’s basic units.
How Your Heart Influences What You Perceive and Fear
The heartbeat and other bodily processes play a surprising role in shaping perception and cognition.
Out-of-Sync ‘Loners’ May Secretly Protect Orderly Swarms
Studies of collective behavior usually focus on how crowds of organisms coordinate their actions. But what if the individuals that don’t participate have just as much to tell us?
Inside Deep Undersea Rocks, Life Thrives Without the Sun
Newly discovered worlds of microbes far beneath the ocean floor, inside old basaltic rocks, could point to a greater likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe.
Sugary Camouflage on Coronavirus Offers Vaccine Clues
In the fight against viruses and other pathogens, scientists are looking beyond genes and proteins to the complex sugars, or glycans, on cell surfaces.
Some Animals Have No Microbiome. Here’s What That Tells Us.
To stay healthy, humans and some other animals rely on a complex community of bacteria in their guts. But research is starting to show that those partnerships might be more the exception than the rule.