Mutated gene associated with colon cancer discovered in 18th-century Hungarian mummy

A new Tel Aviv University discovery suggests that a genetic predisposition to cancer preceded the advent of modernization -- and, in a bizarre twist, they discovered this evidence in an 18th-century Hungarian mummy.

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Super Guide to Super Tuesday — Democratic Edition

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders compete in 12 contests on Tuesday. It’s a lot to keep track of, but here is all the info you need to follow the results like a pro.

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Here are the ways to be eco-friendly after you die

A human body can decompose in four to six weeks, bones, teeth and all. With enough moisture and nutrients to aid the process, we can go from one thing, a human, to an entirely different material—an entirely different scientific thing—in less time than most people allot between haircuts. But that’s not how it usually goes. Instead we do everything we can to make sure our dead bodies cling to their inert existence.

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Living up a bum - The Sea Cucumber and Pearl Fish

They say 'Home is where the heart is', well for some 'Home is where the bum is'.. Wait! What? Backup! Yep you heard right 'Home is where the bum is', if you're a pearl fish and that bum is a sea cucumber.

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Tokyo students develop architectural 3D-printing pen

A group of University of Tokyo students overseen by Kengo Kuma have developed a 3D-printing pen that can be used to create complex architectural structures

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15 Mesmerizing Science GIFs, Explained

They look cool, but they also teach us something.

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SpaceX calls last-second rocket abort

The California rocket company experiences a dramatic, last-second abort, as onboard computers shut down the engines on a Falcon 9 right at the moment of lift-off.

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Olm eggs: Tense Wait for Baby Slovenian 'Dragons'

In a Slovenian cave visited by a million tourists each year, a bizarre and rare amphibian is guarding a significant clutch of eggs.

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Automation won't destroy jobs, but it will change them

The last few years have seen numerous studies pointing to a bleak future with technology-induced unemployment on the rise. For example, a pivotal 2013 study by researchers at the University of Oxford found that of 702 unique job types in the United States economy, around 47% were at high risk of computerisation.

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Southern Hemisphere: Solar and lunar eclipses for March

This month features a partial solar eclipse, a hint of a lunar eclipse, Jupiter the jewel of planets, and Mars is in the grip of the scorpion.

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Frightful Nights Under the Stars

Nighttime skywatching sometimes means expecting the unexpected as these stories from amateur astronomers illustrate.

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History of science: When eugenics became law

Victoria Nourse reviews a study on a historic US misuse of biology, the case of Buck v. Bell. Adam Cohen's 'Imbeciles' relates a key chapter in this story. Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck.

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Stretchable electronics that quadruple in length

Researchers have developed conductive tracks that can be bent and stretched up to four times their original length. They could be used in artificial skin, connected clothing and on-body sensors.

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Former Tepco bosses charged Fukushima meltdown

First criminal action to be taken after 2011 disaster, in which three nuclear reactors went into meltdown after earthquake

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How our ancestors drilled rotten teeth

Long before humans invented writing, the wheel and civilisation, they learned how to drill rotten teeth to relieve the pain of tooth decay

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Facebook’s AI is learning by reading loads of children’s books

Neural networks developed by Facebook are able to fill in missing words in passages – thanks to a reading list involving many children's classics.

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Life in Technicolor—One month wearing EnChroma’s color blindness-fixing glasses

By blocking wavelengths, glasses create a new world complete with grass, traffic lights.

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Ground control bids farewell to Philae comet lander

Mission scientists have decided to give up trying to contact the comet lander Philae. The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission dropped the robot onto Comet 67P in November 2014. But after a troubled landing and 60 hours of operation, there has largely been radio silence from Philae. The German Aerospace Center (DLR), which led the consortium behind Philae, said the lander is probably now covered in dust and too cold to function.

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Six burning questions for climate science to answer post-Paris

The Paris agreement has given us some solid targets to aim for in terms of limiting global warming. But that in turn begs a whole range of new scientific questions.

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The Fierce Courage of Nina Simone

Simone’s courage was undeniable, but it was also a shield, even a mask, designed to protect her from hostile forces, real and imagined. White supremacy was not the only hellhound on her trail. By Adam Shatz.

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Lagos’s blackout nightmare: the suburb that’s been in darkness for five years

For Lagosians, electricity shortages can mean cooking by torchlight, or companies spending a shocking 70% of the budget on diesel ... and some neighbourhoods have spent half a decade with no power at all. By Eromo Egbejule.

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A world where everyone has a robot: why 2040 could blow your mind

In March 2001, futurist Ray Kurzweil published an essay arguing that humans found it hard to comprehend their own future. It was clear from history, he argued, that technological change is exponential — even though most of us are unable to see it — and that in a few decades, the world would be unrecognizably different. “We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress...

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60 years after pioneering survey, Wisconsin prairies are changing rapidly

Researchers have found that human influence has accelerated the rate of species change in these prairies and likely in other natural places.

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Something strange has happened to reindeer 30 years after Chernobyl

Chilling photos of Norway's "radioactive reindeer."

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Graphene ‘moth eyes’ could create indoor solar cells

Researchers studied moths' eyes to create the most light-absorbent material ever created. By Anthony Cuthbertson.

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Mysterious Martian "Cauliflower" May Be the Latest Hint of Alien Life

The hunt for signs of life on Mars has been on for decades, and so far scientists have found only barren dirt and rocks. Now a pair of astronomers thinks that strangely shaped minerals inside a Martian crater could be the clue everyone has been waiting for. In 2008, scientists announced that NASA’s Spirit rover had discovered deposits of a mineral called opaline silica inside Mars's Gusev crater. That on its own is not as noteworthy as...

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How Ancient Coral Revealed the Changing Length of a Year

The lines on fossilized specimens show that millions of years ago, it took 420 days for the Earth to complete an orbit around the sun.

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Step aboard a former Disney Imagineer's $83m flying palace

With the lavishly furnished Skyacht One private jet, designer Eddie Sotto evokes Captain Nemo's Nautilus.

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The Life Project: what makes some people happy, healthy and successful – and others not?

The factors that most affect our life chances are revealed as the first group of British babies followed in a remarkable cradle-to-grave study turns 70. By Helen Pearson

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The first Boeing 727 ever made will soon take its last flight

More than 50 years after its maiden voyage, the very first Boeing 727 will take its very last flight on Tuesday, March 1, weather permitting. The 727 will fly from Paine Field to Boeing Field International, both in Washington state. From there, the plane will go on permanent display at the adjacent Museum of Flight, where it will help kick off Boeing's centennial celebration at the museum.

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Peter Sellers Gives a Quick Demonstration of British Accents

From cockney to upper class and from London to Edinburgh, it’s classic Sellers all the way.

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China has created an artificial star 8,600 times hotter than the sun

The reaction, which is caused by nuclear fusion, has the potential to revolutionize how we use energy.

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Maybe It’s Time to Take Animal Feelings Seriously

Dogs can read human emotions. So, it appears, can horses. Whales have regional accents. Ravens have demonstrated that they might be able to guess at the thoughts of other ravens — something scientists call “theory of mind,” which has long been considered a uniquely human ability. All of these findings have been published within the past several weeks, and taken together they suggest that many of the traits and abilities we believe...

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Images of Change

Muir Glacier melt, Alaska

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The Other Astronomical Breakthrough That Took 100 Years to Achieve

Perhaps the best historical analog for the gravitational wave search and detection is the search for the trigonometric parallax. 

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Design and Science

Can design advance science, and can science advance design?

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Scientists make significant anti-aging breakthrough

A breakthrough in understanding human skin cells offers a pathway for new anti-ageing treatments. For the first time, scientists at Newcastle University, UK, have identified that the activity of a key metabolic enzyme found in the batteries of human skin cells declines with age. A study, published online in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, has found that the activity of mitochondrial complex II significantly decreases in older skin.

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Mind-Controlled Limbs and Home-Made Skin

In the field of medical prosthetics, things are changing quickly. Learn about mind-controlled limbs, and research that suggests that we may be able to go high-tech with low-cost materials.

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Keeping Up With The Joneses' Latest Medical Procedure

Having reached the average life expectancy for an American male, Dr. Schumann's father is acutely interested in his buddies' illnesses and treatments. Call it "medical me-tooism."

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This Week's Sky at a Glance, February 26 – March 5: Northern Hemisphere

Sky & Telescope's guide the sky tonight: sky views, charts, and astronomy sights for your unaided eyes, binoculars, or a telescope.

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Solar cells as light as a soap bubble

The final ultra-thin, flexible solar cells, including substrate and overcoating, are just one-fiftieth of the thickness of a human hair and one-thousandth of the thickness of equivalent cells on glass substrates — about two micrometers thick — yet they convert sunlight into electricity just as efficiently as their glass-based counterparts.

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Newly discovered planet in the Hyades cluster could shed light on planetary evolution

Astronomers have discovered a planet in a nearby star cluster which could help astronomers better understand how planets form and evolve.

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Elon Musk's favorite Riddle

I'm somewhere on earth. I walk one mile south, one mile west, and one mile north. I end up exactly where I started. Where am I? All of the solutions.

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Lab-grown sperm makes healthy offspring

Sperm have been made in the laboratory and used to father healthy baby mice in a move that could lead to infertility treatments. By James Gallagher.

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It’s actually easy to force people to be evil

Neurological evidence that people feel less responsible for actions when taking orders. By Annalee Newitz,

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‘Selfish’ DNA flouts rules of inheritance

R2d2 is selfish DNA that could skew scientists’ views of adaptation and evolution. By Tina Hesman Saey.

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FORMS IN NATURE: Understanding Our Universe

Through scientific study and understanding, we deepen our connection to the natural world. An audiovisual collaboration by Kevin Dart // Stéphane Coëdel // David Kamp // Nelson Boles

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What Is the Largest Number?

This is not a trick question

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EVs will be cheaper than gasoline-powered cars by mid-2020s

Continuing drops in lithium-ion battery prices mean that electric vehicles (EVs) will be less expensive to own than gas or diesel-powered vehicles as soon as the 2020s, according to a new report. The report, by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, calculated that EVs' total cost of ownership will become cheaper on an unsubsidized basis than that of internal combustion engine cars by the mid-2020s. This will occur even if gas-powered...

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Driving while angry or sad increases your risk of crashing by nearly 10 times

Next time you’re about to head somewhere in your car but you’re not feeling entirely great, emotionally speaking, you might want to consider postponing your trip. Researchers in the US have compiled what they say is the largest crash-based driving study ever conducted, and the data shows that drivers who are observably angry, sad, crying, or emotionally agitated increase their crash risk nearly tenfold when they get behind the wheel.

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