‘Fresh Banana Leaves’ shows how Western conservation has harmed Indigenous people
Fresh Banana LeavesJessica HernandezNorth Atlantic Books, $17.95 During the civil war in El Salvador that began in the 1970s, an injured Victor Hernandez hid from…
Fresh Banana LeavesJessica HernandezNorth Atlantic Books, $17.95 During the civil war in El Salvador that began in the 1970s, an injured Victor Hernandez hid from…
Imagine removing a branch of the U.S. government, say the Supreme Court. What are the myriad ways that such an upheaval might reshape people’s lives?…
For many of us, it’s the height of winter, with harsh weather and the pandemic keeping us inside. If you’re looking for a new way…
From mules to ligers, the list of human-made hybrid animals is long. And, it turns out, ancient. Meet the kunga, the earliest known hybrid animal…
Northern Somalia’s economy relies heavily on livestock. About 80 percent of the country’s annual exports are meat, milk and wool from sheep and other animals.…
A story doesn’t necessarily end once it goes online. Here, Science News offers status updates on some evolving stories we reported on earlier this year.…
From a record-setting black hole to the oldest animal DNA ever recovered, discoveries in 2021 stretched the limits of scientific study — and our imaginations.…
Tiny molecules came up big in 2021. By year’s end, COVID-19 vaccines based on snippets of mRNA, or messenger RNA, proved to be safe and…
This year, health experts around the world revised their views about how the coronavirus spreads. Aerosol scientists, virologists and other researchers had determined in 2020…
2021 was the year the COVID-19 vaccines had to prove their mettle. We started the year full of hope: With vaccines in hand in record-breaking…
Many of the Science News staff’s favorite books of the year challenge how we understand the world, from rethinking human history to reimagining the toilet.…
After eight years, a project that tried to reproduce the results of key cancer biology studies has finally concluded. And its findings suggest that like…
Virginia’s Tangier Island is rapidly disappearing. Rising sea levels are exacerbating erosion and flooding, and could make the speck of land in the Chesapeake Bay…
From 2012 to 2015, a team of researchers collected 2.9 million police officer patrol records in Chicago. The team’s analysis of that data, from nearly…
The World Health Organization has warned that the globe is dealing with two pandemics. One is the spread of the coronavirus, but the other, equally…
The Dawn of EverythingDavid Graeber and David WengrowFarrar, Straus and Giroux, $35 Concerns abound about what’s gone wrong in modern societies. Many scholars explain growing…
It’s been a little over six months since I got my second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, and…
In the children’s chapter book series Zoey and Sassafras, which my own two kids adore, young Zoey has to work out how to save magical…
The emergency hospital, a partially demolished building hastily enclosed with wooden partitions, was about to open. It was the fall of 1918 in Philadelphia, and…
Over 300 years ago, Swiss physician Johannes Hofer observed disturbing behaviors among Swiss mercenaries fighting in far-flung lands. The soldiers were prone to anorexia, despondency…
Some of the most insightful — and now most celebrated — studies of such major social issues as minimum wages and immigration have seized on…
Each year since 2015, Science News has featured the work of outstanding early- and mid-career scientists in our SN 10: Scientists to Watch list. They’re…
B. Gregory “Science asks the questions. / And poetry marks the spot.” This line from “Unweaving Science,” the opening track of the spoken word album…
From the day Archimedes cut his bath short to shout “Eureka,” science has been a constant source of surprises. Even after the abundant accumulation of…
Fuzz Mary RoachW.W. Norton & Co., $26.95 Around the world, criminals run free in the forest. These villains can’t be arrested — because they’re not…
In December, my husband, our 5-year-old daughter and I tested positive for COVID-19. Life, already off-kilter, lurched. Smell, taste, breath — were they normal? The…
On the FringeMichael D. GordinOxford Univ., $18.95 There is no such thing as pseudoscience, and Michael Gordin has written a book about it. In On…
Daniel’s birth certificate is marked “female,” but Daniel is nonbinary — not exclusively male nor female. “I’m masculine leaning,” says the 18-year-old. The disconnect between…
With lemon and black plumage, the Scott’s oriole flashes in the desert like a flame. But the bird’s name holds a violent history that Stephen…
Consider a ruler, a timeline or even weights lined up in a gym. Why are the smaller values, the earlier times and the lighter weights…
Wild SoulsEmma MarrisBloomsbury, $28 On the Arctic Ocean’s fringe, polar bears stand on ice thinning from human-caused climate change. Without thick ice from which to…
From lies about election fraud to QAnon conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine falsehoods, misinformation is racing through our democracy. And it is dangerous. Awash in bad…
My Remarkable JourneyKatherine Johnson with Joylette Hylick and Katherine MooreAmistad, $25.99 Katherine Johnson became a household name circa 2016, when the bestselling book and Hollywood…
Gray wolves help keep North America’s deer populations in check, and by doing so, may provide an added benefit for people: curbing deer-vehicle collisions. In…
Over the last four decades, a highly organized, well-funded campaign powered by the fossil fuel industry has sought to discredit the science that links global…
Good habits are hard to adopt. But a little bribery can go a long way. That’s the finding from an experiment in India that used…
As vaccines to protect people from COVID-19 started becoming available in late 2020, the rhetoric of anti-vaccine groups intensified. Efforts to keep vaccines out of…
In the densely populated slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh, children survive on rice cooked with curry powder and cheap cookies and chips, packaged in appealing, colorful…
On January 30, 2020, Science Gallery Dublin assembled a small group of experts to discuss a strange new disease that had recently emerged in China.…
Information outflow – Science News, June 5, 1971 The United States’ population is growing at a rate of one percent a year, and even with…
On May 30, 1921, Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old Black shoe shiner, walked into an elevator in downtown Tulsa, Okla. What happened next is unclear, but…
TsunamiJames Goff and Walter DudleyOxford Univ., $34.95 On March 27, 1964, Ted Pederson was helping load oil onto a tanker in Seward, Alaska, when a…
What do you think was riskier during the pre-vaccine days of the pandemic: having your lonely parents over for dinner or going to a beach…
In an opening scene of the new film Fathom, Michelle Fournet sits at her computer in the dark, headphones on. The marine ecologist at Cornell…
What happened to UFOs? — Science News, June 26, 1971 Since 1968 the number of UFO sightings has dropped off, along with public interest in…
Finding the Mother TreeSuzanne SimardKnopf, $28.95 Opening Suzanne Simard’s new book, Finding the Mother Tree, I expected to learn about the old growth forests of…
Time is a finite resource. So it’s not entirely surprising that after decades of ramping up time spent on parenting, some well-educated mothers appear to…
As one of Japan’s most active volcanoes, Sakurajima often dazzles with spectacular displays of volcanic lightning set against an ash-filled sky. But the volcano can…
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