The oldest known surgical amputation occurred 31,000 years ago
A child who lived on the Indonesian island of Borneo around 31,000 years ago underwent the oldest known surgical operation, an amputation of the...
SCIENTIFIC NEWS
How mythology could help demystify dog domestication
In Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog, a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Edison discovers that dogs are intellectually superior beings. They’re so smart, in...
A coral pollution study unexpectedly helped explain Hurricane Maria’s fury
Hurricane Maria struck the island of Puerto Rico early on September 20, 2017, with 250-kilometer-per-hour winds, torrential rains and a storm surge up to...
The worldwide water-lifting power of plants is enormous
When it comes to hoisting water, plants are real power lifters. For a tall tree, slurping hundreds of liters of water each day up...
Meet the fungal friends and foes that surround us
The Hidden Kingdom of FungiKeith SeifertGreystone Books, $27.95 Take a walk through the woods after it rains, and you can catch a glimpse of...
Indigenous Americans ruled democratically long before the U.S. did
On sunny summer days, powerboats pulling water-skiers zip across Georgia’s Lake Oconee, a reservoir located about an hour-and-a-half drive east of Atlanta. For those...
What you need to know about the new omicron booster shots
Revamped COVID-19 vaccines are poised to do battle with the super-contagious omicron variant. On September 1, U.S. health officials greenlit the first major update...
Zapping plastic with a laser forged tiny diamonds
A laser blast produces miniature diamonds from plain-old plastic. That’s right, the same kind used in soda bottles. When squeezed to about a million...
In 2021, a deadly volcano erupted with no warning. Here’s why
In May 2021, Congo’s Mount Nyiragongo, one of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes, burst to life without warning. Lava erupted from fissures and flowed...
Here’s the James Webb telescope’s first direct image of an exoplanet
This is the first picture of an exoplanet from the James Webb Space Telescope. “We’re actually measuring photons from the atmosphere of the planet...
‘One step away from famine’: Inside Afghanistan’s hunger crisis 
Bangladesh: UNICEF chief calls for an end to child marriage 
Rule breaking by just a few people can be contagious 
Yemen war continues to force families from homes amid hunger and disease