Science

Red squirrels can carry bacteria that cause leprosy Karin Greevy/Shutterstock The DNA of leprosy-causing bacteria has been found in the remains of people and a red squirrel unearthed at medieval sites in the UK. This makes red squirrels the earliest known non-human hosts of the infection and suggests it may have spread between the rodents … Read more

Three main factors converge to intensify hurricanes. The first is that as the world in general warms, so too do the oceans. Water evaporating off the surface rises, releasing heat that fuels the developing hurricane. The warmer a patch of ocean water is, the more energy a cyclone has to exploit. If a hurricane like … Read more

People have a pretty intuitive sense of what is healthy – standing is better than sitting, exercise is great for overall health and getting good sleep is imperative. However, if exercise in the evening may disrupt our sleep, or make us feel the need to be more sedentary to recover, a key question emerges – … Read more

Making the world safer for butterflies can be as easy as doing a bit of nothing. Letting some part of a yard go unmown can boost the number of butterflies and moths sighted there, says ecologist Richard Fox. That long-grass patch may be as elaborate as an all-native meadow dotted with flowers or as simple … Read more

China is headed back to the moon’s mysterious far side — and this time, the nation will bring back some souvenirs. The robotic Chang’e 6 mission launched Friday (May 3) at 5:27 a.m. EDT (0927 GMT; 5:27 p.m. Beijing time), riding a Long March 5 rocket off a pad at the Wenchang Space Launch Site, in southern China’s Hainan … Read more

Anthropologists at Rice University suggest in a new study that establishing networks of ‘sister cities’ dedicated to addressing the impact of natural disasters can mitigate the devastation wrought by climate change. Published in the journal Nature, “Sister cities for the Anthropocene” by professors Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer explores the connectivity of “sister cities,” broad-based, … Read more

Gas Stove Pollution Lingers in Homes for Hours Even outside the Kitchen Gas stoves spew nitrogen dioxide at levels that frequently exceed those that are deemed safe by health organizations By Allison Parshall Nearly 40 percent of U.S. homes have gas stoves, which spew a host of compounds that are harmful to breathe, such as … Read more

In female mammals, genes on one copy of the X chromosome are usually inactivated vchal/Shutterstock Female mammals have a higher risk of developing autoimmune conditions such as lupus because extra copies of genes that are supposed to be permanently turned off get reactivated as they grow older, a study of mice suggests. The findings are … Read more