Tag Archives: Research

In a quiet patch of forest in Nova Scotia, a company is building a machine designed to help slow global warming by transforming Earth’s rivers and oceans into giant sponges that absorb carbon dioxide from the air. When switched on later this year, the machine will grind up limestone inside …

An older patient with dementia is in the hospital and has trouble swallowing. A speech pathologist recommends thickening the liquids the patient drinks with starch or gum and specifies how viscous her tea, water or juice should be. Should it resemble honey? Or apricot nectar? A doctor writes the order, …

Q: I have had a Kacey Musgraves song stuck in my head for two weeks and it’s making me crazy. Why is this happening? First, some reassurance: You’re not alone. Research suggests that catchy songs that get lodged in your head — colloquially known as earworms — are common, and …

In the 1960s, Jane Goodall started spending weeks at a time in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania watching chimpanzees. One of her most important discoveries was that the apes regularly made gestures to one another. Male chimpanzees tipped their heads up as a threat, for example, while mothers motioned …

Even before Georgia Outlaw met her new nephrologist, she had made her decision: Although her kidneys were failing, she didn’t want to begin dialysis. Ms. Outlaw, 77, a retired social worker and pastor in Williamston, N.C., knew many relatives and friends with advanced kidney disease. She watched them travel to …

The human brain, more than any other attribute, sets our species apart. Over the past seven million years or so, it has grown in size and complexity, enabling us to use language, make plans for the future and coordinate with one another at a scale never seen before in the …

Rain may have been an essential ingredient for the origin of life, according to a study published on Wednesday. Life today exists as cells, which are sacs packed with DNA, RNA, proteins and other molecules. But when life arose roughly four billion years ago, cells were far simpler. Some scientists …

A new study describes 700,000-year-old teeth and arm bones from one of our most enigmatic relatives: a toddler-size “hobbit” who lived on a small island between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The study, published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that the species, Homo floresiensis, sometimes nicknamed hobbits, …