Life Science

A Punnett square helps predict the possible ways an organism will express certain genetic traits, such as purple flowers or blue eyes.

By Jesslyn Shields

Scientists have determined that years of ivory poaching to fund Mozambique's civil war altered the genetics of the country's elephants. But it only affected the females. A new study tells why.

By Joanna Thompson

Whole genome sequencing can analyze a baby's DNA and search for mutations that may cause health issues now or later in life. But how prepared are we for this knowledge and should it be used on all babies?

By Joanna Thompson

Research shows no two brains are put together quite the same way. And we can find out the patterns in under two minutes.

By Jesslyn Shields

Footprints unearthed at White Sands National Park in New Mexico were made some 23,000 years ago. That's much earlier than scientists have previously placed humans in the Americas.

By Matthew Robert Bennett & Sally Christine Reynolds

CRISPR is the genius behind innovations that seemed impossible a decade ago. Could you grow tomatoes with the kick of hot sauce or ferment wine that doesn't cause a hangover? That's just two of the things scientists are looking into.

By Joanna Thompson

Does it bug you when people around you fidget? If it does, you have something called misokinesia and you are not alone because one-third of those studied felt the same way.

By Todd Handy & Sumeet Jaswal

Even if you've never seen a saguaro in person, when you think "cactus," you're probably thinking "saguaro."

By Jesslyn Shields

Researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz determined that only about 1.5 to 7 percent of the modern human genome is unique to humans. The rest we share with our relatives the Neanderthals and the Denisovans.

By Joanna Thompson

Batesian mimicry is an evolutionary strategy used by vulnerable species to look like a dangerous species so predators will leave them alone. But it only works under the right circumstances.

By Jesslyn Shields

They might look like piles of goop, but slime molds can think and seemingly make decisions without a brain.

By Jesslyn Shields

The marshmallow test is all about delayed gratification in children, but can other animals pass it too? And why would they?

By Jennifer Walker-Journey

Mold is a type of fungus, and it's everywhere — indoors, outdoors and even in the air. But is black mold worse than the rest?

By Melanie Radzicki McManus

The U.S. has been a nation in mourning for more than a year. But the normal rituals for mourning deceased loved ones have been anything but normal. How do we move on and when?

By John Donovan

One of the weirdest organisms on Earth has a predictably quirky method of deciding where to go and what to do.

By Jesslyn Shields

The question of exactly what is human consciousness and how it came to be in the human mind has raged forever between philosophers, religious scholars and scientists, but does the theory of the bicameral mind explain it?

By Robert Lamb

Erosion and weather can combine to make rock formations look like all kinds of things, from human faces to animals. They're called mimetoliths and we've taken a look at four of the most famous.

By Michelle Konstantinovsky

Do we owe the emergence of language and self-reflection to the ancient and sustained consumption of psilocybin mushrooms?

By Robert Lamb

Organisms not related to each other can develop similar physical attributes without even exchanging notes.

By Jesslyn Shields

We see faces in clouds, on buildings — heck, in grilled cheese sandwiches. But why is that? And how is this a help to our survival?

By Dave Roos

Niels Bohr proposed the model of the atom that we still learn in school today, even though it's technically incorrect.

By Jesslyn Shields

This new form of sound therapy takes advantage of the fact that a different frequency in each ear yields a third frequency that can allegedly calm you down or improve your focus. Does it really work? Our writer tried it out.

By Alia Hoyt

Nitrogen is essential to living things, but it also plays hard to get.

By Jesslyn Shields

Centrioles are spindles that create the pathways for chromosomes to follow during cell division.

By Jesslyn Shields

Heuristics are rule-of-thumb strategies that help us shorten decision-making time and solve problems quickly and effortlessly.

By Michelle Konstantinovsky