For The Better

An unusually severe form of toxoplasmosis killed four sea otters and could pose a threat to other marine wildlife and humans, finds a new study.

Chocolate bars, chips and fries – why can’t we just ignore them in the supermarket? Researchers have now shown that foods with a high fat and sugar content change our brain: If we regularly eat even small amounts of them, the brain learns to consume pr…

In 1802, Ludwig van Beethoven asked his brothers to request that his doctor, J.A. Schmidt, describe his malady — his progressive hearing loss — to the world upon his death so that ‘as far as possible at least the world will be reconciled to me after …

Engineers have developed a new water treatment that removes ‘forever chemicals’ from drinking water safely, efficiently — and for good.

Urine scent marks are the original social media, allowing animals to advertise their location, status and identity. Now research is shining a new light — via thermal imaging of mice — on how this behavior changes depending on shifting social conditions.

Researchers have ‘hacked’ the earliest stages of photosynthesis, the natural machine that powers the vast majority of life on Earth, and discovered new ways to extract energy from the process, a finding that could lead to new ways of generating clean f…

The push toward truly autonomous vehicles has been hindered by the cost and time associated with safety testing, but a new system shows that artificial intelligence can reduce the testing miles required by 99.99%.

By combing through genomic data of over 1 million people of European or African descent, scientists have identified genes commonly inherited across addiction disorders, regardless of the substance being used. This dataset — one of largest and most div…

When the first interstellar comet ever seen in our solar system was discovered in 2017, one characteristic — an unexplained acceleration away from the sun — sparked wild speculation, including that it was an alien spacecraft. An astrochemist found a …

Researchers describe why SARS-CoV-2 subvariants spread more rapidly than the original virus strain, and how an early treatment might have made people more susceptible to future infections.

A model system created by stacking a pair of monolayer semiconductors is giving physicists a simpler way to study confounding quantum behavior, from heavy fermions to exotic quantum phase transitions.