1+ hour, 59+ min ago   (1063+ words) Perching birds evolved their body shapes in rare, sudden bursts that lined up with moments of upheaval in Earth’s climate. A new study reconstructs about 50 million years of change in their skeletons. Most of that change was packed into a…...

1+ hour, 34+ min ago   (1128+ words) The neighborhood a woman lives in can predict the state of her heart for the better part of her adult life, according to the results of a new study. The researchers tracked roughly 1,200 women in eastern Massachusetts for more than…...

2+ hour, 56+ min ago   (1155+ words) Mars was a rehearsal, not a destination. Here is what a spacecraft built for a metal asteroid came away with after aiming everything it had at the Red Planet. None of them matter. What matters is learning where the settings…...

3+ hour, 42+ min ago   (1097+ words) China’s giant sinkholes protect rare plants and trees while quietly undermining their future. The walls of these pits keep out heat and drought. They also keep out almost everything else, including the pollen and seeds a species needs to maintain…...

5+ hour, 9+ min ago   (1044+ words) A small group of well-connected microbes appears to keep a giant deep-water reservoir’s chemistry steady, even as the wider microbial population turns over from year to year. Over three years, the mix of species in the water changed more between…...

4+ hour, 45+ min ago   (1025+ words) The nearest single star to the Sun hosts four rocky planets unlike anything in our own Solar System, and none of them appears capable of supporting life. A new study suggests that the worlds orbiting Barnard’s Star are small, dry,…...

5+ hour, 55+ min ago   (956+ words) For more than a century, biologists believed a plant’s outer skin determined how its organs took shape. A new study points instead to genetic activity deep inside the tissue. Researchers traced a stem’s thickness to a small set of genes…...

7+ hour, 12+ min ago   (1253+ words) A new study has found that baboons and macaques match shapes using the same geometric intuitions as human preschoolers. On the hardest version of the task, the monkeys leaned on abstract properties of shape more heavily than the children did. The…...

6+ hour, 41+ min ago   (1077+ words) People who eat a lot of ultra-processed foods carry a distinct chemical signature in their blood, one tilted toward harmful fats, a large European study has found. The pattern paired higher levels of fats tied to cellular stress with lower…...

6+ hour, 32+ min ago   (929+ words) The powerful families who ruled the nomads of the Eurasian steppe some 2,500 years ago kept power within their bloodlines. A new study of ancient DNA finds that members of the Scythian elite were often close relatives, even when their graves…...