In many oil and gas producing regions, flames light the sky. The flares burn off 98 percent of the escaping natural gas, oil and gas companies claim. But observations of three U.S. oil and gas fields show efficiency is ... [more]

It’s a frustration many parents know all too well: You’ve finally lulled your crying baby to sleep, so you put them down in their crib … and the wailing begins again. Science may have a trick for you. Carrying a crying ... [more]

A long-sought “holy grail” in cryptography is poised to change the way we protect sensitive information. Today’s standard encryption schemes take an all-or-nothing approach. Once scrambled, your data become ... [more]

When Emily Jacobs embarked on a career studying the brain in the early 2000s, a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, was having a moment. “Just like we have super powerful telescopes that ... [more]

In January 2020, Caltech biochemist Pamela Bjorkman asked for volunteers to help work out the structures of immune proteins that attack a newly discovered coronavirus. The pathogen had emerged in China and was causing ... [more]

Visitors to the village of Drumnadrochit, on the western shore of Scotland’s murky Loch Ness, come to see the nearby ruins of Urquhart Castle or to chance a glimpse of the elusive Loch Ness Monster. But growing up in ... [more]

Environmental engineer Smruthi Karthikeyan had spent just a couple of days working in her new lab at the University of California, San Diego when the state instituted its first coronavirus lockdown in March 2020.  ... [more]

Inspiration doesn’t play by any set rules. It can come from anywhere and strike when it’s least expected. A first hint of a big idea can hang on in the recesses of the mind and push people ahead in roundabout ways. Our ... [more]

Though humans’ nearly hairless bodies stick out like a cowlick among other primates, our nakedness isn’t unique in the world of mammals. Dolphins and whales are naked, says biological anthropologist Tina Lasisi of the ... [more]

It’s no revelation that sea levels are rising. Rising temperatures brought on by human-caused climate change are melting ice sheets and expanding ocean water. What’s happening inside Earth will also shape future ... [more]

If you saw Carlos Argüelles-Delgado’s childhood bedroom — the whiteboard for working out problems, the math textbooks they asked for as birthday gifts — you’d likely not be surprised that this kid would grow up to ... [more]

Josep Cornella doesn’t deal in absolutes. While chemists typically draw rigid lines between organic and inorganic chemistry, Cornella, a researcher at Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr, ... [more]

Growing up in Brazil, Marcos Simões-Costa often visited his grandparents’ farm in the Amazon. That immersion in nature — squawking toucans and all — sparked his fascination with science and evolution. But a video of a ... [more]

The psychological development of young adults may have taken a hit, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. In typical times, people tend to become more conscientious and agreeable and less neurotic with age, a process known ... [more]

A mucus-wicking robotic pill may offer a new way to deliver meds. The multivitamin-sized device houses a motor and a cargo hold for drugs, including ones that are typically given via injections or intravenously, such as ... [more]

My, what small teeth they had. A newfound treasure trove of ancient fish fossils unearthed in southern China is opening a window into the earliest history of jawed vertebrates — a group that encompasses 99 percent of ... [more]

Prosthetic teeth could make great hearing aids. Vibrations applied to replacements for lost teeth travel well through jawbones to the inner ear, researchers report in the September Journal of the Acoustical Society of ... [more]

Fen, Bog & SwampAnnie ProulxSimon & Schuster, $26.99 A recent TV ad features three guys lost in the woods, debating whether they should’ve taken a turn at a pond, which one guy argues is a marsh. “Let’s not pretend ... [more]

The coral reef, once bustling with more than 5,000 long-spined sea urchins, became a ghost town in a matter of days. White skeletons with dangling spines dotted the reef near the Dutch Caribbean island of Saba, the water ... [more]

Mission control rooms rarely celebrate crash landings. But the collision of NASA’s DART spacecraft with an asteroid was a smashing success. At about 7:15 p.m. EDT on September 26, the spacecraft hurtled into Dimorphos, ... [more]