Mysterious neutrino surplus hints at the existence of new particles

Pip-squeak particles called neutrinos are dishing out more than scientists had bargained for. A particle detector has spotted a puzzling abundance of the lightweight subatomic particles and their antimatter partners, antineutrinos, physicists report May 30 at arXiv.org. The finding mirrors a neutrino excess found more than two decades ago. And that match has researchers wondering […]

A new AI can focus on one voice in a crowd

Much like someone listening to a conversation at a crowded party, a new artificial intelligence can tune out background noise in videos to hear what a particular person on screen is saying. Humans are naturally good at focusing on specific voices amidst the din — a phenomenon known as the cocktail party effect (SN Online: […]

An ancient swimming revolution in the oceans may have never happened

About 540 million years ago, the oceans were an alien landscape, devoid of swimming, or nektonic, creatures. Some scientists have hypothesized, based on fossil evidence, that swimmers suddenly dominated in the oceans during the Devonian Period, between 419 million and 359 million years ago. But an in-depth study of marine fossils now suggests that this […]

Most Americans think it’s OK to tweak a baby’s genes to prevent disease

Only a day after the first test-tube baby turned 40, a poll about American’s attitudes toward tweaking unborn babies’ genes reveals the hopes and hesitations of being on the brink of the latest reproductive era. Americans generally favor gene editing, but only for heading off diseases. Boosting intelligence would be “taking medical technology too far,” […]

Women and men get research grants at equal rates — if women apply in the first place

Women face an uphill battle in biomedical science, on many fronts. There is bias in hiring and in how other scientists view their research. Fewer women are chosen to review scientific papers. Men still outnumber women at the ivory tower’s highest floors, and of course, women in science face harassment based on their gender. But […]

Scientists successfully transplant lab-grown lungs into pigs

For the first time, researchers have created lungs in the lab and successfully transplanted them into pigs. These bioengineered lungs, described online August 1 in Science Translational Medicine, developed healthy blood vessels that allowed pigs to live for several weeks after surgery. That’s a significant improvement from previous efforts: Lab-grown lungs implanted in rodents failed […]