SCIENCE

Twenty years ago, researchers made the accidental discovery that the now infamous plastics ingredient known as bisphenol A or BPA had inadvertently leached out of plastic cages used to house female mice in the lab, causing a sudden increase in chromosomally abnormal eggs in the animals. Now, the same team …

People have a tendency to interpret new information in a way that supports their pre-existing beliefs, a phenomenon known as confirmation bias. Once they’ve made a decision about which house to buy, which school to send their kids to, or which political candidate to vote for, they have a tendency …

To see under starlight and moonlight, the retina of the eye changes both the software and hardware of its light-sensing cells to create a kind of night vision. Retinal circuits that were thought to be unchanging and programmed for specific tasks are adaptable to different light conditions, say the Duke …

Scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) have identified new means of fighting drug-tolerant bacteria, a growing global threat as menacing as drug-resistant microbes. Little is known about the mechanisms leading to tolerance, a strategy that makes bacteria “indifferent” to antibiotics and almost “un-killable,” which …

Fishing pressure on threatened shark populations has increased dramatically in recent years and it is urgent that consumers reject shark fin products altogether — a study in Marine Policy by researchers from the Swire Institute of Marine Science (SWIMS), School of Biological Sciences, University of Hong Kong (HKU), the Sea …

The world needs to keep global temperatures in check by meeting the goals set out in the Paris Agreement, or more people could die because of extreme temperatures, say authors of a new study in the letters section of Springer’s journal Climatic Change. The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015 under …

Analysis of bones, from what was once the world’s largest bird, has revealed that humans arrived on the tropical island of Madagascar more than 6,000 years earlier than previously thought — according to a study published today, 12 September 2018, in the journal Science Advances. A team of scientists led …

New evidence from the Maya city of Copan, in Honduras, reveals that ancient Mesoamericans routinely captured and traded wild animals for symbolic and ritual purposes, according to a study published September 12, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Nawa Sugiyama from George Mason University, Virginia, USA, and colleagues. …

Someday doctors may prescribe sugar pills for certain chronic pain patients based on their brain anatomy and psychology. And the pills will reduce their pain as effectively as any powerful drug on the market, according to new research. Northwestern Medicine scientists have shown they can reliably predict which chronic pain …

Fewer and fewer women die from breast cancer in recent years but, surprisingly, the decline is just as large in the age groups that are not screened. The decline is therefore due to better treatment and not screening for breast cancer. This is shown by a major Danish-Norwegian study, Effect …

Quantum particles can be difficult to characterize, and almost impossible to control if they strongly interact with each other — until now. An international team of researchers led by Princeton physicist Zahid Hasan has discovered a quantum state of matter that can be “tuned” at will — and it’s 10 …

What is a symbol? This is a tough question to answer when tasked with analyzing the earliest graphic productions. What we might today interpret as figurative representations might just be an ancient doodle that had no special purpose. For a long time, archaeologists were convinced the first symbols appeared when …

A team of scientists has uncovered the neural processes mice use to ignore their own footsteps, a discovery that offers new insights into how we learn to speak and play music. The research is reported in the journal Nature. “The ability to ignore one’s own footsteps requires the brain to …

What are researchers doing? The sixth mass extinction continues and is even accelerating, but conservation scientists, it is claimed, have no solutions to offer. Even more worrying, the researchers would be so pessimistic that the warnings they give could be counterproductive. But is this really the case? Two CNRS researchers* …

A new scientific analysis of nearly 4,000 mutations deliberately engineered into the BRCA1 gene will immediately benefit people undergoing genetic testing for breast or ovarian cancer risk. The study will be published in the Sept. 12 edition of the scientific journal, Nature. Additional data from the research has been made …

While bacteria that produce electricity have been found in exotic environments like mines and the bottoms of lakes, scientists have missed a source closer to home: the human gut. University of California, Berkeley, scientists discovered that a common diarrhea-causing bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes, produces electricity using an entirely different technique from …

Approximately 61 percent of the world’s 356 turtle species are threatened or already extinct, and the decline could have ecological consequences. These findings are according to a paper in the journal BioScience synthesizing the global status of turtles and their ecological roles by scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, Tennessee …

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified four types of neurons in the peripheral auditory system, three of which are new to science. The analysis of these cells can lead to new therapies for various kinds of hearing disorders, such as tinnitus and age-related hearing loss. The study is …

The explosions of stars, known as supernovae, can be so bright they outshine their host galaxies. They take months or years to fade away, and sometimes, the gaseous remains of the explosion slam into hydrogen-rich gas and temporarily get bright again — but could they remain luminous without any outside …

A Yale research team has revealed how cells in different parts of the human airway vary in their response to the common cold virus. Their finding, published in Cell Reports, could help solve the mystery of why some people exposed to the cold virus get ill while others don’t, said …