All Stories by Anna Gibbs
- Materials Science
A materials scientist seeks to extract lithium from untapped sources
Lithium is an essential ingredient for batteries in electric vehicles but getting enough will become a problem.
- Microbes
A fluffy, orange fungus could transform food waste into tasty dishes
The fungus thrives on everything from soy pulp to bland custards, turning them into digestible foods with a surprisingly pleasant flavor.
- Health & Medicine
Expanding antibiotic treatment in sub-Saharan Africa could save kids’ lives
Current guidelines limit treatment to infants. Giving antibiotics to at-risk kids under 5, too, has an indirect effect on infant survival, a new trial shows.
- Animals
Static electricity may help butterflies and moths gather pollen on the fly
Electrostatically charged lepidopterans could draw pollen out of flowers without touching the blooms, computer simulations suggest.
- Health & Medicine
Here’s what distorted faces can look like to people with prosopometamorphopsia
A patient with an unusual variation of the condition helped researchers visualize the demonic distortions he sees when looking at human faces.
- Archaeology
This Stone Age wall may have led Eurasian reindeer to their doom
Hunter-gatherers living 10,000 years ago in what is now Germany probably used the wall to trap reindeer in a nearby lake.
- Chemistry
The smallest known molecular knot is made of just 54 atoms
Chemists are still trying to figure out why this combination of gold, phosphorus, oxygen and carbon atoms resulted in a molecular knot in the first place.
- Animals
A global report finds amphibians are still in peril. But it’s not all bad news
A survey of about 8,000 amphibian species provides the latest update on extinction risk trends stretching back to 1980.
- Humans
Lauren Schroeder looks beyond natural selection to rethink human evolution
Paleoanthropologists studying the fossil record have long focused on natural selection, but other processes play a big role too.
- Animals
Urchins are dying off across the Caribbean. Scientists now know why
A type of single-celled microorganism associated with coral diseases is behind a sea urchin die-off in the Caribbean.
- Archaeology
Vikings brought animals to England as early as the year 873
A chemical analysis of cremated remains offers physical evidence of the arrival of Norse animals to England in the ninth century.
- Archaeology
Mysterious marks on Ice Age cave art may have been a form of record keeping
Hunter-gatherers during the Ice Age may have recorded when prey mated and gave birth, suggesting that these people possessed complex cognitive skills
