The human body is a master at regulating itself. For example, if your blood pressure rises precipitously, it will cause your arterial wall to stretch. Receptors in your body will sense this change and ...

On a lonely planet, billions of years ago, a soup of chemicals — in the right place, at the right time, and with the right conditions — shifted from an unalive assemblage into something scientists ...

Stereotypes die hard. If we’re asked to picture a scientist at work, it’s tempting to reach for an old stand-by: the astronomer at the eyepiece of an enormous telescope, or the chemist surrounded by ...

When the first European settlers arrived on the east coast of North America in the 16th century, they found a land filled with astounding natural wonders and biological richness. Herds of elk and ...

For decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has served as a gatekeeper, tasked with preventing dangerous, ineffective, and under-studied pharmaceuticals from being placed on the market. If you ...

On a rare, clear day, one can look due west from the Mount Wilson Observatory, perched at nearly 6,000 feet on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and see the wide basin of the San Fernando Valley. A ...

Other animals may have some capacity to grasp small numbers, but only humans have jumped on the number train and steamed ahead full throttle. As mathematician and author Richard Elwes sees it, it all ...

Alissa Deming pierced the whale’s heart on her first try. Bright arterial blood shot up the needle as she started pumping potassium chloride, a medication used to euthanize animals, into the ...

Ahead of an artificial intelligence conference held last April, peer reviewers considered papers written by “Carl” alongside other submissions. What the reviewers did not know was that, unlike other ...

Yale psychiatrist Albert Powers didn’t know what to expect as he strolled among the tarot card readers, astrologers, and crystal vendors at the psychic fair held at the Best Western outside North ...

In 2006, a new study on antidepressants was making headlines with its promising results: Two-thirds of participants who tried various antidepressants recovered from their depression symptoms within ...

Most people used to think the Crestone Needle, a jagged peak in Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo range, was unclimbable. Until, that is, Albert Ellingwood and Eleanor Davis reached its summit in 1916.