A street dog in Varanasi city, India

How Street Dogs Spend their Days

Generally lazy, often friendly, the dogs of India know how to relax.
Indian migrant workers walk on a bridge after they were stopped by police while returning to their native places, as the country relaxed its lockdown restriction on May 14, 2020 in New Delhi, India

India’s Coronavirus Migration Crisis

Widespread market failure and unemployment triggered by the coronavirus pandemic have set off a crisis of domestic migration in India.
Nikolai Vavilov in prison

The Weed Scientist Who Brought Down the Wrath of Stalin

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov's hypothesis on the evolution of rye is now accepted. But in the 1930s, his research got him arrested.
Francesca Vidotto

Francesca Vidotto: The Quantum Properties of Space-Time

Theoretical physicist Francesca Vidotto on feminist epistemology, white holes, string theory, and her book (with Carlo Rovelli) on loop quantum gravity.
Gif og a woman alseep on a white sheet with clocks blinking in and out of sight

What Is Chronobiology?

Does it explain why we’re having so much trouble sleeping?
A series of torn up academic papers against a blue background

Preprints, Science, and the News Cycle

Preprints are academic papers that haven't been peer-reviewed yet. When preprints make news, that's often overlooked.
An illustration of the coronavirus in front of a strand of DNA

Can We Protect Against Coronavirus by Rewriting Our Genomes?

Genome recoding could offer new modes of virus resistance, but the technology raises serious ethical concerns.
Women administer two drops to a child in India

Two Drops of Life: India’s Path to End Polio

On the eve of its 6th polio-free anniversary, India immunizes over 170 million children, despite a lack of roads, reinfection threats, and a periodic mistrust of vaccines.
A hedgehog in a porcelain cup

Biomimicry Comes for the Noble Hedgehog

Inventors often use animals' adaptations to the environment in applications that benefit humans, from sharky swimsuits to hedgehog-inspired helmets.
John Tyndall's setup for measuring radiant heat absorption by gases

How 19th Century Scientists Predicted Global Warming

Today’s headlines make climate change seem like a recent discovery. But Eunice Newton Foote and others have been piecing it together for centuries.