Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits
- Genetics
What would it take to make a unicorn?
Onward’s dumpster-diving unicorns seem like an impossibility. But scientists have some ideas about how unicorns could become real.
- Health & Medicine
Search speeds up for vaccine against the new coronavirus
Scientists are investigating unusual ways to make drugs to prevent viral infections. One may even be able to treat already sick people.
- Animals
Analyze This: Shimmering colors may help beetles hide
Delve into data showing how brilliant colors that shift as a viewer — or predator — moves may help iridescent insects blend in.
- Animals
The many efforts to lick cat allergies
Up to one in five people around the world may be allergic to cats. Science is coming to help their desire for kitty cuddles.
- Health & Medicine
Immune arms-race in bats may make their viruses deadly to people
An overactive immune system may help bats avoid being sickened by many viruses. This may viruses becoming stronger — and deadlier — when they hit other species.
- Health & Medicine
Experts rethink need for X-ray shielding of patients
For close to 70 years, workers who perform X-ray scans of the body have been advised to shield sensitive tissues with lead 'aprons.' That may soon stop.
- Health & Medicine
Your most urgent questions about the new coronavirus
Researchers have more questions than answers right now about 2019-nCoV. They’re racing to understand and stop the coronavirus and the health crisis it poses.
- Health & Medicine
The many challenges of corralling a coronavirus outbreak
The Chinese government has quarantined millions of people in hopes of limiting spread of a new coronavirus. But no one yet knows how much this will help.
- Health & Medicine
Explainer: What is a coronavirus?
Coronaviruses are a diverse family of disease-causing agents. Some cause the common cold. Newer ones have emerged to pose more serious threats to people.
- Health & Medicine
Serious virus emerges in China and is spreading globally
A new viral infection emerged in December 2019 among people in Wuhan, China. The mystery illness has already killed at least 17 people and sickened many hundreds.
- Environment
Australian fires have imperiled up to 100 species
As massive wildfires consume huge swaths of Australia’s bush, untold species — many of them found nowhere else — are now threatened with extinction.
- Microbes
Drug-resistant germs kill some 35,000 Americans each year
The new mortality rate may be way low, some experts say. Also troubling are two new germs that have emerged as big and urgent threats.
