Science

Climate change may threaten North America’s iconic mass monarch butterfly migration. Every fall, millions of monarchs (Danaus plexippus) travel thousands of kilometers over North America as they leave their breeding grounds in Canada and the United States for wintering grounds...

Certain nutrients critical for human health lack the shelf life needed to span multi-year missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. NASA’s BioNutrients-3 is part of an experiment series testing ways to use microorganisms to produce these nutrients in...

A monkey making a meal of a squirrel may have sparked an outbreak. In early 2023, mpox broke out among a group of a few dozen sooty mangabeys (Cercocebus atys) living in Côte d’Ivoire’s Taï National Park. Roughly one-third of the monkeys...

The invasion of Ukraine has stymied healthcare services, allowing diseases such as HIV to spread unchecked. The rate of contagion has been difficult to gauge. But now, using a van equipped with portable research gear, virologist Ganna (Anna) Kovalenko...

For the first time, a much younger version of the Sun has been caught red-handed blowing bubbles in the galaxy, by astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.The bubble – called an “astrosphere” – completely surrounds the juvenile star. Winds...

From ancient nomads to modern job-hoppers, the urge to move may be written partly into our DNA.People’s tendency to set down roots far from where they were born is partly inherited and grounded in early brain development, researchers report...

People who can’t stop scratching itches may finally have a culprit to blame.In mice (and probably people), a protein called TRPV4 is involved both in starting an itch and stopping it after scratching, says neuroscientist Roberta Gualdani. She will...

MIT.nano has added a new X-ray diffraction (XRD) instrument to its characterization toolset, enhancing facility users’ ability...

Editor’s note: This story contains light spoilers for Project Hail Mary.I have long puzzled over something in Andy Weir’s 2021 book Project Hail Mary: Why did two of the three fictional astronauts die during an interstellar trip? It might be...

The Antarctic Peninsula is an early warning system for the southernmost continent when it comes to climate change. And the prognostications are grim — but it’s not yet too late to avoid irreversible changes, researchers report February 20 in...