Science

[:es]Sweet potato plants don’t have spines or poisons to defend themselves. But some have evolved a clever way to let hungry herbivores know they aren’t an all-you-can-eat buffet, a new study finds. When one leaf is injured, it produces a chemical that alerts the rest of the plant—and its neighbors—to make themselves inedible to bugs.…

[:es]Earlier today, after a successful rocket launch from India, the beginnings of a new satellite constellation for Earth observation took place. An existing flotilla of more than 80 microsatellites owned by the startup Spire Global, based here, captures signals that have traversed the atmosphere from GPS satellites to measure key properties such as temperature and…

[:es]High in the Canadian Arctic on Baffin Island, beneath 10 meters of water and many more of mud, sits a refrigerated archive of Earth’s past life. The deep sediments in a small lake called CF8 hold ancient pollen and plant fossils. But it now appears that the mud harbors something else: ancient DNA from as…

[:es]Many human grandmothers love to spoil their grandchildren with attention and treats, and for good reason: Studies have shown that having a living grandmother increases a child’s chance of survival. Now, new research shows the same may be true for killer whales. By providing young animals with some freshly caught salmon now and then—or perhaps…

[:es]When humans started to tame dogs, cats, sheep, and cattle, they may have continued a tradition that started with a completely different animal: us. A new study—citing genetic evidence from a disorder that in some ways mirrors elements of domestication—suggests modern humans domesticated themselves after they split from their extinct relatives, Neanderthals and Denisovans, approximately…

[:es]Say “sit!” to your dog, and—if he’s a good boy—he’ll likely plant his rump on the floor. But would he respond correctly if the word were spoken by a stranger, or someone with a thick accent? A new study shows he will, suggesting dogs perceive spoken words in a sophisticated way long thought unique to…

[:es]Like vinyl records, the strange concept of a time crystal is spinning back into fashion. In 2012, a Nobel Prize–winning physicist proposed that the properties of a system of quantum particles might cycle in time much as a crystal’s pattern of atoms repeats in space, even without the addition of energy, making it a bit…

[:es]Reports of lung injuries from e-cigarettes splash across the news these days, but the nicotine-delivery devices are also spawning a quieter worry: whether users risk long-term health effects that may not manifest for decades. Studies in animals and people are now starting to probe whether e-cigarettes pose chronic risks to the lungs and cardiovascular system…

[:es]In a handful of cities around the world, mosquitoes have been armed with a microscopic weapon against disease. The bacterium Wolbachia pipientis blocks the insects’ ability to spread fearsome viruses such as dengue, Zika, and chikungunya. Since 2011, researchers have been injecting Wolbachia into the eggs of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and releasing the hatched insects,…