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In 1996, a small, fluffy carnivore called Sinosauropteryx became the first dinosaur known to have had feathers. In 2010, it entered the ranks of the first dinosaurs to have their color elucidated, when analysis suggested that it had a fetching tail of ginger-and-white stripes. Now, UK researchers have reconstructed the color pattern across its entire body. Their findings reveal that Sinosauropteryx was countershaded—dark on top and light underneath. It also sported a ‘bandit’ mask on its face, resembling that of a raccoon....

Pluto’s heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio could be considered the dwarf planet’s aesthetic highlight. This colossal, highly reflective geologic feature was captured with beautiful clarity by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during its 2015 flyby. Its elliptical western lobe, Sputnik Planitia, which by recent estimates is more than 1,200 miles long, caught the attention of planetary scientists: It appears to be a bowl carved out by a monumental ancient impact. And today it is filled with young floes of churning nitrogen ice....

We all heard the warning as kids: “That TV will rot your brain!” You may even find yourself repeating the threat when you see young eyes glued to the tube instead of exploring the real world. The parental scolding dates back to the black-and-white days of I Love Lucy, and today concern is growing amid a flood of video streaming on portable devices. But are young minds really being harmed? With brain imaging, the effects of regular TV viewing on a child’s neural circuits are plain to see....

Droughts, heat waves and other extreme climate-related events are growing concerns in a warming world. Studies have found climate change is already fueling an increase in some extreme events and that they’re likely to worsen as temperatures continue to climb. Now, new research suggests the reverse may also be true—these events, themselves, could also worsen climate change. Weather and climate events tend to affect the amount of moisture contained in the soil, according to the study published yesterday in the journal Nature....

All visual art is illusory in that it involves a departure from reality, a filtering through the mind of the artist. This subjectivity applies not only to abstract works but also to representational art, in which the artist translates his or her perception into a physical object capable of inducing a similar perception in the viewer. Painters render the three-dimensional world on a flat surface. These representations are enough to suspend our visual system’s disbelief and trigger barrages of neuronal firing that become visions of bathers, bridges and water lilies....

It turns out Americans can count on Girl Scouts for more than just their annual supply of Tagalongs, Do-si-dos and Thin Mints. A new study shows the troop members could also be secret weapons in the battle against climate change. Rachel Swan is one of them. Through a program called GLEE—Girls Learning Environment and Energy—the San Mateo, Calif., 12-year-old and her troop learned how to use less energy through five hourlong sessions....

Atheists are one of the most disliked groups in America. Only 45 percent of Americans say they would vote for a qualified atheist presidential candidate, and atheists are rated as the least desirable group for a potential son-in-law or daughter-in-law to belong to. Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia recently published a set of studies looking at why atheists are so disliked. His conclusion: It comes down to trust....

By Elaine Lies TOKYO (Reuters) - An embarrassing court ruling that halted Japan’s Antarctic whaling will actually help Tokyo take whales in the name of science, a top whaling official said just a day after the prime minister vowed to press for commercial whaling. Tokyo’s decades-old and disputed “scientific whaling” program suffered a blow in March when the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in a surprise ruling, ordered a halt to annual hunts in the Southern Ocean....

Sight begins when light bounces off surfaces and enters our eyes. The muscles of our pupils control how much light passes through, and the clear cornea and lens bend the light and focus it onto the retina, a thin strip of tissue covered in millions of light-sensitive neurons, or photoreceptors. These nerve cells, named for the way they are shaped—like rods and cones—are where light is converted into electrical signals then sent via the optic nerve to the visual centers of the brain....

From the COVID vaccine to pulsars to computer programming, women are at the source of many scientific discoveries, inventions and innovations that shape our lives. But in the stories we’ve come to accept about those breakthroughs, women are too often left out. Each season at Lost Women of Science, we’ll look at one woman and her scientific accomplishment: who she was, how she lived and what she found out. Katie Hafner, a longtime reporter for the New York Times, explains the science behind each woman’s work and explores the historical context in which she lived....

A global pledge to reduce methane emissions took two steps forward yesterday as 24 countries signaled they would join the effort and donors committed $200 million to the cause. The pledge now includes nine of the world’s top 20 methane emitters, representing about 30 percent of global emissions. “If we act together, we can really make a difference because rapidly reducing global methane emissions is the single fastest strategy we have to limit global warming,” Frans Timmermans, vice president of the European Commission, said at the opening of a ministerial meeting on the Global Methane Pledge....

The nights are long inside a tent 5,300 meters above sea level at the snout of Nepal’s Yala Glacier. At 8:00 P.M., after a meal of Nepali dal bhat (lentils and rice), the 10 members of our expedition take refuge against the cold in sleeping bags inside the small tents that make up our temporary camp. Falling asleep is tough because the low oxygen concentration fools our bodies into increasing their heart rates....

By Caroline Stauffer SAO DESIDERIO, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazilian farmers are battling a voracious caterpillar that likely arrived from Asia, challenging the agricultural superpower’s widely touted mastery of tropical farming just as it is on the verge of becoming the world’s top soybean producer. The caterpillar, a variety known as helicoverpa armigera that thrives in dry heat, was spotted for the first time in the Americas on cotton farms in drought-prone western Bahia in early 2012, fuelling panic among farmers who had no idea what it was....

Since the 1960s scientists have known that some species of whiptail lizards need a male even less than a fish needs a bicycle. These all-lady lizard species (of the Aspidoscelis genus) from Mexico and the U.S. Southwest manage to produce well-bred offspring without the aid of male fertilization. But how do they—and the other 70 species of vertebrates that propagate this way—do it without the genetic monotony and disease vulnerability that often results from asexual reproduction?...

In 1963, a British biophysicist won a shiny Nobel Prize medal for discovering how the nerve cells of squid generate an electrical pulse when stimulated. His hard-earned hunk of gold recently sold at auction for nearly $800,000. The Nobel Prize medal, sold by Nate D. Sanders Auctions in Los Angeles, belonged to Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, who helped pioneer research on the central nervous system. Hodgkin was awarded the prize in physiology or medicine along with his colleagues Andrew Fielding Huxley and John Eccles....

As the short Antarctic spring ends and long summer days approach, geo­scientists are flocking to the frozen continent to start a new kind of exploration. In December, the first drill designed to search for a scientifically useful sample of ice that is at least 1.5 million years old will begin its work. It is part of a broader effort to locate the best place to extract a core containing Earth’s oldest ice, which would help to reveal how climate has shaped the planet’s past and how to predict future fluctuations....

The vibrant colors in Zoll’s photographs are the product of each crystal’s structure—not added by a computer. “If you look through the microscope, this is pretty much exactly what you see,” he says, though he does take multiple shots of each slide to create a panoramic effect. Zoll does not have a background in chemistry or physics, but he harbors a deep appreciation for the beauty of science. “Simple math creates similar structures, from the cosmic down to what I’m looking at in my bedroom under a microscope,” he says....

Climate models, they just don’t make ‘em like they used to. Of course, that may not be a bad thing. Like an Atari to an Xbox One, a Nokia brick to an iPhone 6, climate modelshave come a long way since their early predecessors. In a video recently published by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, you can see just how much of an update computer-run models have undergone from their humble beginnings in the 1950s....

Better healthcare relies on turning good ideas into real-world solutions. Johnson & Johnson developed JLABS to help emerging companies transform scientific discoveries into tomorrow’s healthcare products. Among the dozens of companies JLABS supports, here are 10 that promise crucial improvements. Discovering disease-fighting proteins A drug’s effect depends on its target. More than half of all prescribed drugs, including antihistamines and opiates, target a family of hundreds of proteins known as the Gprotein coupled receptors (GPCRs)....

It can happen in any creative field. Something old becomes new because of how it is used or how it is presented. It can happen in any field, but last week it happened to me in the classroom and in the kitchen. My students were trying to come up with new numeration systems. I showed them different bases. I showed them gray codes. I showed them the Fibonacci numeration system. They had a hard time coming up with something new....