Sarah Zhang
What Mormon Family Trees Tell Us About Cancer
By searching the church's famed family trees, scientists have tracked down a cancer-causing mutation that came west with a pioneer couple—just in time to save the lives of their great-great-great-great grandchildren.
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Wade Payne / AP Naked-Mole-Rat Queens Control Their Subjects by Having Them Eat Poop
Feces turn subordinates into better caretakers for the colony’s pups.
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Phil Noble / Reuters Should You Take a DNA Test?
Kits from companies like 23andMe can reveal unpleasant surprises.
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Juliane Zeidler Fog Is Full of Microbes
“A fog droplet isn’t a bad environment to live in"
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Thomas Higham / University of Oxford Scientists Stunned by a Neanderthal Hybrid Discovered in a Siberian Cave
The extraordinary find is rewriting the story of archaic and modern humans.
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Brandon Martin / Rice University The Parasitic Vine That Slowly Sucks the Life Out of Wasps
“Pretty freaky”
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Michael Virtanen / AP The Mystery of the Ancient Volcano That May Have Inspired Atlantis
Experts still vehemently disagree over when one of the biggest eruptions of the Holocene actually happened.
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Toru Hanai / Reuters Why Is Buying Pet Food So Hard?
A new start-up is making vegan food for dogs and lab-grown mouse meat for cats. It wants to change the way all pets eat.
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Kyselova Inna / Shutterstock Blueberry Earth: The Delicious Thought Experiment That's Roiling Planetary Scientists
“A roaring ocean of boiling jam, with the geysers of released air and steam likely ejecting at least a few berries into orbit.”
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Phil Noble / Reuters Big Pharma Would Like Your DNA
23andMe’s $300 million deal with GlaxoSmithKline is just the tip of the iceberg.
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Jorge Silva / Reuters Why Did 11 Babies Die in a Generic Viagra Trial?
On the many attempts to repurpose a drug best known for treating erectile dysfunction
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Reuters The Deleted WeChat Post That Fueled China's Vaccine Scandal
It alleged a complex web of corruption going back decades.
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Nikola Solic / Reuters The Mystery of How Neanderthals Got Fire
Fifty-thousand-year-old tools suggest that modern humans weren't prehistory's only pyros.
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Catherine St Clair / Prokrida / Shutterstock / ... When a DNA Test Shatters Your Identity
“Each person comes into our group thinking they are a freak.”
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David Parry / Reuters The Farcical Battle Over What to Call Lab-Grown Meat
The FDA held a public meeting to talk about it, but no one could agree on what to call it.
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Anthony Pagano / USGS How to Train a Polar Bear to Walk on a Treadmill
“It takes a lot of patience.”
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Herbert Mayrl / Courtesy Gran Acuifero Maya Project The Worst Thing You Can Do Is Panic
A veteran cave diver explains the unique risks—and rewards—of his deadly pursuit.
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Claudia Torrens / AP Which Company Will Test the DNA of Separated Families?
And other unanswered questions about the HHS’s new plan to reunite migrants separated at the border.
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Herwig Prammer / Reuters Europe Is Running Low on CO2
The shortfall has sparked fears of shortages of beer, meat, and crumpets. (Crumpets!)
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AP / Wilson Ring Does GMO Labeling Actually Increase Support for GMOs?
The consequences of a labeling law in Vermont were not what either side expected.
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Science Photo Library / Steve Gschmeissner / Getty The Mysterious ‘Jumping Gene’ That Appears 500,000 Times in Human DNA
Its segments make up 17 percent of our genome, but scientists are only just starting to understand what it does.
