Female applicants to postdoctoral positions in geosciences were nearly half as likely to receive excellent letters of recommendation, compared with their male counterparts. Christopher Intagliata reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jean-Pierre Sauvage, James Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa share the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the design and synthesis of molecular machines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
David J. Thouless, F. Duncan Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz split the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Japan's Yoshinori Ohsumi wins the 2016 prize for discoveries related to autophagy, the process in cells whereby they degrade some of their internal structures and send the parts out for recycling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Reseachers have started to examine the genetic traces of the movement of some six million African-Americans from the south to the north and west between 1910 and 1970. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A housefly relative appears to be key to the reproductive success of a hardy tundra shrub. But the insect is threatened by the warming climate. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A protein from microscopic creatures called tardigrades keeps their DNA protected—and could someday shield humans from radiation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When the sun, moon and Earth are aligned, high tidal stress may increase the chances that an earthquake will grow bigger than it otherwise might have been. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
An ant walking in the desert can gauge distance by footsteps and the sun's position, but an ant being carried can estimate distance by visual information perceived as it passed by. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Researchers used high-tech visualization techniques to peer inside an ancient scroll too fragile to unwrap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The branches of birch trees in Europe sagged by as much as four inches at night compared with daytime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A chromosomal rearrangement may cause one mosquito species to be lured to cows instead of humans for a blood meal. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Drinkers surrounded by even more inebriated people feel less drunk than a breathalyzer test indicates they actually are. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Fabric dyed with indigo just found in Peru is some 1,600 years older than indigo-dyed fabrics that have been found in the Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
By playing road noise where there was no road, researchers were able to gauge the effect of the noise on bird behavior without having to deal with the effect of the road itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
South America and central Africa lost the most wilderness in a decline since the 1990s that saw the planet's wild areas down by a tenth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The chip uses pulses of laser light to generate truly random numbers, the basis of encryption. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Researchers determined that the variation of a couple hundred proteins in a person's hair could be enough to single her out from one million individuals. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sharks can accumulate both methylmercury and a toxin called BMAA, which can have synergistic effects on human consumers. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Teenage girls who cared for infant dolls, an intervention meant to prevent pregnancy, actually had a higher risk of getting pregnant by age 20. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bearded dragons modify their colors for camouflage or to maintain body temperature, or to communicate with other dragons. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Using an artificial stream system, researchers found that amphetamine residues altered insect and microbial life in aquatic ecosystems. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In 12 hours Dracaena plants removed nearly all the acetone from an airtight chamber, suggesting they might be put to use as air filters in nail salons. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Badgers were far more frightened by the sounds of humans than by their traditional predators, such as bears or wolves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A survey during the 2012 election found that bus tours and visits to greasy spoons didn't do much to change voter opinions. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Upending the belief that residents of ancient Central America did not practice animal husbandry, new evidence shows that people in Teotihuacán raised and bred rabbits and hares. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A black hole analogue, which traps sound instead of light, generates "Hawking radiation," a key prediction by the theoretical physicist. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In neighborhoods where kids have an increased chance of exposure to toxic lead, pigeons also have higher blood lead levels—making the birds potential proxies for risk assessment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Researchers found that a bad actor could cheaply and easily clone a remote keyless entry system to gain entry. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Individual Greenland sharks appear to live perhaps a century longer than any other vertebrate, and might have life spans approaching 500 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
