Life
- Health & Medicine
Tomatoes’ tasteless green gene
The tomatoes your great-grandparents ate probably tasted little like the ones you eat today. The fruit used to have more flavor. A lot more flavor. In fact, tomatoes “were once so flavorful that you could take one in your hand and eat it straight away just like we regularly eat apples or peaches,” according to plant scientist Alan Bennett. He belongs to a team of international scientists who now think they know one reason why the fruit has lost so much flavor. Although some unripe tomatoes have a dark green patch near the stem, farmers prefer that their unripe tomatoes are the same shade of green all over. The consistent coloring makes it easier for them to know when the fruit should be picked.
- Fossils
Hot or cold dinos
Patterns in dinosaur bones fuel a debate over whether they were warm- or cold-blooded.
- Animals
Cool Jobs: Studying what you love
Researchers study the same animals that fascinated them as kids.
- Plants
Whale-free perfume
Tree gene trick is good news for people who like perfume made without sperm whale waste.
- Animals
Chimp’s gift for numbers
Translating numbers into colors may explain an animal’s apparent memory trick.
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- Fossils
End of big bug era
Flying predators probably gobbled up the biggest of the large flying insects 150 million years ago
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- Earth
The oldest place on Earth
Antarctica may seem like the dead continent, but it once bustled with life — a little of which still survives.
- Brain
Candy on the brain
Imaging reveals brain regions that become active when you want someone else’s stuff.
