Helen Thompson | Science News for Students

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Helen Thompson

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a child with measles scratching their back

Measles is extremely contagious. And one number, or rather a range of them, sums up the risk of its spread.

SOLIDCOLOURS/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS

 Health
By the numbers: How infectious measles and other diseases spread
An R0 is one measure of how easily a disease can spread
house cat

You called? Cats can recognize the sound of their own names, a new study shows. But that doesn’t mean they will come, sit or fetch. 

denozy/iStock/Getty Images Plus

 Animals
Yes, cats know their own names
They could pick out their names when called, a new study shows
beach garbage

Fishing nets and ropes make up nearly half of the mass of plastic in the Pacific Ocean’s notorious garbage patch, a new study suggests.

NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

 Pollution
Pacific garbage patch may be 16 times bigger than thought
Fishing nets and ropes make up roughly half of the debris
Curiosity selfie
Curiosity has done a lot more than take selfies in front of Gale Crater, and with its mission extended through next fall, there’s still more science to come.

MSSS, JPL-Caltech/NASA

 Planets
What the Curiosity rover has learned about Mars so far
While it has found no signs of life, its cameras and other tools have spied hints of water and habitable soils
horse running

Pictures by turn-of-the-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge became an animation that scientists stored in bacterial DNA.

EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE/U.S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

 Genetics
Scientists hide a real movie within a germ’s DNA
A tool called CRISPR helped store a galloping horse GIF in the DNA of bacteria
mummy sarcophagus

New and extremely careful techniques now show Egyptian mummies can be a reliable source of ancient DNA. An analysis of 90 of these African mummies revealed family ties to the Middle East, not to other sites in Africa.

bpk/Aegyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, SMB/Sandra Steiss

 Archaeology
DNA from African mummies tie these folk to Middle Easterners
High-tech genetic methods and skilled techniques reveal genetic origin to the east, not the south