All Stories

  1. photo of the Salt Lake City downtown skyline with the Wasatch Mountains in the background
    Environment

    Dust from a shrinking Great Salt Lake may be accelerating Utah’s snowmelt

    About a quarter of the record-breaking, snow-melting dust on the Wasatch Mountains in 2022 may have come from exposed lakebed at Great Salt Lake.

    By Brianna Randall
  2. A painting of a group of Xiongnu herders riding horses with more livestock seen off to the side.
    Archaeology

    How Asia’s first nomadic empire broke the rules of imperial expansion

    New studies reveal clues to how mobile rulers assembled a multiethnic empire of herders known as the Xiongnu more than 2,000 years ago.

    By Bruce Bower
  3. A close up photo of a mosquito resting on a person's finger.
    Health & Medicine

    Four things to know about malaria cases in the United States

    Five people have picked up malaria in the United States without traveling abroad. The risk of contracting the disease remains extremely low.

    By Erin Garcia de Jesús
  4. A photo of three ancient stone artifacts from the island of Palawan in the Philippines on a black background.
    Archaeology

    Indigenous input revealed early hints of fiber making in the tropics

    To decipher marks on nearly 40,000-year-old stone tools and figure out what they were used for, researchers turned to the Philippines’ Pala’wan people.

    By Luis Melecio-Zambrano
  5. A close up photo of a castor bean tick sitting on dry grass.
    Animals

    Static electricity can pull ticks on to their hosts

    Ticks brought near objects with a static charge frequently get pulled to those surfaces, a new study finds, suggesting one way the bugs find hosts.

    By Soumya Sagar
  6. A photo of a teen boy's profile with the light shining just on his face.
    Psychology

    Boys experience depression differently than girls. Here’s why that matters

    Boys’ depression often manifests as anger or irritability, but teen mental health surveys tend to ask about hopelessness.

    By Sujata Gupta
  7. A photo of the IceCube neutrino detector in Antarctica with a view of the Milky Way and aurora australis lights.
    Physics

    Neutrinos offer a new view of the Milky Way

    Physicists turned to AI to help map out the newfound origins of ghostly neutrino particles coming from deep in the Milky Way.

    By James R. Riordon
  8. a composite of photos of a lion, a resplendent quetzal, golden poison frog and blue shark (left to right)
    Science & Society

    Humans exploit about one-third of wild vertebrate species

    An analysis of nearly 47,000 vertebrate animal species reveals that using them for food, medicine or the pet trade is helping push some toward extinction.

    By Sid Perkins
  9. A drone photo of a southern stretch of the North American boreal forest burnt by wildfires.
    Climate

    The snow forest of North America may be about to shrink

    From 2000 to 2019, the boreal forest’s northern boundary didn’t move while southern tree cover thinned due to climate change, wildfires and logging.

    By Nikk Ogasa
  10. An illustration of a pulsar.
    Astronomy

    A newfound gravitational wave ‘hum’ may be from the universe’s biggest black holes

    Scientists reported evidence for a new class of gravitational waves, likely created by merging supermassive black holes.

    By Emily Conover
  11. A close up photo of several squash bug nymphs climbing over a green plant.
    Life

    Young squash bugs seek out adults’ poop for an essential microbe

    Squash bug nymphs don’t rely on their parents to pick up a bacterium they’d die without. They find it on their own.

    By Erin Garcia de Jesús
  12. An image of cosmic clouds glowing in X-rays.
    Astronomy

    200 years ago, the Milky Way’s central black hole briefly awoke

    The black hole is thought to be mostly quiet and dim. Now, glowing cosmic clouds have revealed the behemoth’s last flare.

    By Lisa Grossman