MS-LS4-6
Use mathematical representations to support explanations of how natural selection may lead to increases and decreases of specific traits in populations over time.
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Health & Medicine
Search speeds up for vaccine against the new coronavirus
Scientists are investigating unusual ways to make drugs to prevent viral infections. One may even be able to treat already sick people.
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Animals
The many efforts to lick cat allergies
Up to one in five people around the world may be allergic to cats. Science is coming to help their desire for kitty cuddles.
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Health & Medicine
Your most urgent questions about the new coronavirus
Researchers have more questions than answers right now about 2019-nCoV. They’re racing to understand and stop the coronavirus and the health crisis it poses.
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Fossils
Small T. rex ‘cousins’ may actually have been growing teens
Dinosaurs once thought to be mini cousins of Tyrannosaurus rex may have been merely adolescent members of the famous species, a new study suggests.
By Sid Perkins -
Environment
Australian fires have imperiled up to 100 species
As massive wildfires consume huge swaths of Australia’s bush, untold species — many of them found nowhere else — are now threatened with extinction.
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Life
Why some whales become giants and others are only big
Being big helps whales access more food. But just how big a whale can get is influenced by whether it hunts or filter-feeds.
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Microbes
Globetrotting microbes in airplane sewage may spread antibiotic resistance
Along with harder-to-kill microbes, airplane sewage contains a diverse set of the genes that let bacteria evade antibiotics.
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Microbes
Drug-resistant germs kill some 35,000 Americans each year
The new mortality rate may be way low, some experts say. Also troubling are two new germs that have emerged as big and urgent threats.
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Animals
Orca snot leads to a whale of a science-fair project
DNA found in the mucus of orcas suggests that even though the traits of family pods may differ, these marine mammals all appear to belong to a single species.
By Sid Perkins -
Health & Medicine
Explainer: What is a hormone?
Various tissues secrete special chemicals, known as hormones. They travel, usually in blood, to a particular distant site where they tell certain cells it’s time to go to work.
By Janet Raloff -
Life
Weird mega-worm found to have odd diet
Giant shipworms have bacteria in their gills that produce food for them. This has made their digestive organs shrink from lack of use.
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Animals
Animals can do ‘almost math’
Humans aren’t the only animals with a number sense. Scientists are trying to figure out where and when it evolved.
By Susan Milius