SCIENCE
-
An Alarming Rise in Measles Cases Is Being Driven By Low Vaccination Rates
UK health services are battling an outbreak of measles — causing alarm in a nation that had eliminated the disease in 2017. On 19 January, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the public-health authority, declared a national incident over rising cases of measles. The agency has logged more than 300 cases in England since 1 October 2023. A decline in uptake of…
Read More » -
Ancient Jewelry Shows Ice Age Europe Had 9 Distinct Cultures
Bling isn’t a modern invention; humans have been wearing what anthropologists call personal ornamentation for tens of thousands of years. And the distinct ways prehistoric people adorned themselves can illuminate long-vanished cultures. A new study has used more than 100 types of beads, made of shells, ivory and other materials, to determine that there were at least nine distinct cultural…
Read More » -
The Roman Empire’s Worst Plagues Were Linked to Climate Change
January 26, 2024 4 min read Changes in the climate may have caused disruptions to Roman society that manifested as disease outbreaks, researchers have found By Tom Metcalfe Jules Élie Delaunay’s “Plague in Rome” (1869) The sixth-century C.E. Plague of Justinian was “a pestilence, by which the whole human race came near to being annihilated,” according to the Byzantine historian…
Read More » -
Some Adults May Need a Measles Booster
The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Imagine a disease more infectious than any other known to medical science, that would kill 2.6 million young children every year and leave millions more with deafness and even brain damage. It sounds like something from pandemic horror fiction, but such a disease does exist…
Read More » -
Pink Fairy Armadillos Have a Weird Double Skin Not Seen in Any Other Mammal
January 20, 2024 3 min read Pink fairy armadillos evolved a unique double skin millions of years ago as they moved underground in response to a drying climate By Richard Pallardy & LiveScience Pink fairy armadillos found to have strange double skins, scientists reveal. Pink fairy armadillos — the smallest species of armadillo — have a unique double skin, scientists…
Read More » -
Children Anticipate What Others Want, But Great Apes Don’t
Have you ever guessed what dish your significant other would order at a restaurant before they even picked up the menu? If so, congratulations, you’ve engaged in a behavior that some researchers believe might be “uniquely human.” In a new paper, published today in PLOS ONE, a team of scientists found that young children from diverse cultural backgrounds have the…
Read More » -
What’s Behind the ‘Arctic Blast’ Plunging into the U.S.?
January 12, 2024 3 min read This week’s cold snap across the U.S. will be one of “the most impressive Arctic outbreaks of this century,” one climate scientist says By Meghan Bartels After months of record-breaking warm temperatures, much of the U.S. is facing a harsh, fast-approaching blast of frigid air from the Arctic that could plunge wind chill factors…
Read More » -
Enigmatic Dinosaur Skull Sparks Debate over Tyrannosaur Evolution
January 11, 2024 4 min read A dinosaur skull first discovered in the 1980s was originally catalogued as a T. rex. Now some scientists argue it represents a new species of tyrannosaur and could shed light on where the massive animals originated By Meghan Bartels Reconstruction of Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis. Revisiting a partial dinosaur skull first discovered in the 1980s has some scientists…
Read More » -
The U.S. Energy Transition Explained in 8 Numbers
CLIMATEWIRE | The power sector is key to U.S. efforts to cut planet-warming pollution this decade. Technologies for generating wind and solar energy are expected to green the economy faster than electric cars and heat pumps, according to deep decarbonization studies. That was evident in 2023 as large solar projects catapulted toward levels never seen before in the U.S. But there were…
Read More » -
The Strange and Beautiful Science Of Our Lives
Brianne Kane: Have you ever thought about how strange everything is? Ha, no—but really, something happens in January, when it still feels like last year, but it’s suddenly this year, and it always makes me ask: What are we transitioning into? What have we transitioned from? I’m Bri Kane, a member of Scientific American’s editorial team and resident reader. Today…
Read More »