Never underestimate the power of a little sunlight. Light particles, or photons, emitted from the sun’s surface, could explain a long-standing solar mystery — why the sun’s outermost layers rotate more slowly than its core. Because the sun isn’t a solid ball, regions at different depths or latitudes rotate at different rates. For decades, scientists […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Girls and boys with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder don’t just behave differently. Parts of their brains look different, too. Now, researchers can add the cerebellum to that mismatch. For boys, symptoms of the disorder tend to include poor impulse control and disruptive behavior. Girls are more likely to have difficulty staying focused on one […]

DNA is setting the record straight on ancient Canaanites. For the first time, scientists have deciphered the complete genetic instruction manuals of Canaanites. By comparing five Canaanite genomes with those of other ancient and modern populations, the researchers identified the Canaanites’ ancestors and discovered their descendants, modern Lebanese people. The results, reported online July 27 […]

Robots are taking “dress for success” to a whole other level. A new type of shape-shifting robot can undergo complete metamorphosis in a matter of minutes. The bot is composed of a simple metal cube that wraps itself in various high-tech origami sheets that fold into wings, wheels and other appendages for getting around. By […]

Blue whales, it turns out, are a tad ambidextrous. When hunting in deep water, the whales tend to be “right-handed,” lunging at krill while twisting 180 degrees or less onto their right side. But when gobbling up the tiny crustaceans near the surface, the whales tend to be lefties, launching themselves upward while performing a […]

The only cure to being drunk is to wait it out. But that might not always be the case: Injecting drunk mice with a naturally occurring hormone helped them sober up more quickly than they otherwise would have, a new study shows. Mice that received a shot of FGF21 — a hormone made by the […]

DNA from strands of Beethoven’s hair is helping to uncover what may have caused his death, researchers say. The composer was plagued with health issues for most of his life. On March 26, 1827, he succumbed to what many historians suspect was liver failure while in his apartment in Vienna. Now, an analysis of several […]

Gonorrhea is a wily foe. But doctors may soon have another drug to fight the sexually transmitted infection that’s become resistant to nearly every antibiotic thrown its way. In clinical trials, a new antibiotic was effective at stopping the bacteria that causes the disease. A single oral dose of the drug, called zoliflodacin, cured 96 […]

Cholesterol-lowering drugs may one day gain a sidekick in the battle against heart disease. Taking a potent drug derived from fish oil along with a statin lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke in some high-risk people, researchers report. A clinical trial called REDUCE-IT tested the approach in more than 8,000 participants who either […]

China is about to make space history. In December, the country will launch the first spacecraft ever to land on the farside of the moon. Another craft, slated for takeoff in 2019, will be the first to bring lunar rocks back to Earth since 1976. These two missions — the latest in China’s lunar exploration […]