More from Laura Baisas (Page 18)

Colorful gemstones nearly arranged. Iron content correlates to the signature purple hue in amethysts and elements including chromium, vanadium, and copper also impact a gem’s color.

Gemstones carry the tale of their geographic origins

By Laura Baisas

A woman holds an alcoholic drink in a bar.

Deaths related to excessive alcohol consumption rise in recent years—especially for women

By Laura Baisas

A bee on a peach rose. Understanding how flowering plants and bees evolved together can help inform conservation efforts for pollinators and how to keep their populations healthy.

The world’s earliest bees may have called Gondwana home

By Laura Baisas

A shower of Perseids meteors lights up the sky in 2009 in this NASA time-lapse image.

Two full moons, colorful meteors, and an asteroid will light up August’s sky

By Laura Baisas

Smoke rises as teams try to extinguish wildfires on Rhodes island, Greece on July 25, 2023. Some 19,000 people have been evacuated from the Greek island of Rhodes as wildfires continued burning for a sixth day, authorities said on Sunday. As many as 266 firefighters and 49 fire engines were on the ground battling the blazes, assisted by five helicopters and 10 airplanes.

July 2023 was likely the hottest month in 120,000 years

By Laura Baisas

A scanning electron picture of a female Panagrolaimus kolymaensis nematode.

Recently awoken 46,000-year-old nematodes already have 100 generations of babies

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s impression of Solnhofia parsonsi’s environment in an Upper Jurassic lagoon 150 million years ago in what is now Lower Bavaria. The turtle swims in a shallow body of water, with fish swimming near it and pterosaurs flying above.

150 million-year-old turtle ‘pancake’ found in Germany

By Laura Baisas

Two Minimocursors stand by a body of water as the sun rises. Minimocursor was an herbivore that was likely widespread across eastern Asia.

New dinosaur species is nicknamed Jurassic’s ‘smallest runner’

By Laura Baisas

A pink river dolphin, or boto, displaying aerial behavior in the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve.

Endangered Species

Eavesdropping on pink river dolphins could help save them

By Laura Baisas

Hospital equipment monitors a patient's vital signs. The Midwestern region of the United States is the only part of the country that did not record more hospitalizations last week than the one before.

COVID-19 hospitalizations and cases rise in possible summer wave

By Laura Baisas

A mountain rises above the buildings of Machu Picchu. The former Inca royal estate stands at the meeting point between the Peruvian Andes and the Amazon Basin and is made up of close to 200 structures.

Machu Picchu was home to ancient people from all over South America

By Laura Baisas

An aerial view of Mont Saint-Michel in northern France. The Paris Basin region is known for prehistoric funerary sites archaeologists use to study early neolithic settlements.

Scientists build intricate Neolithic family tree from 7,000-year-old DNA

By Laura Baisas

Dead elkhorn coral at Sombrero Reef in the Florida Keys. The white areas are bleached coral, the brownish orange patches are "tissue slough", coral tissue that has died before it has a chance to bleach.

Mass coral reef bleaching in Florida as ocean temperatures hit 100 degrees

By Laura Baisas

A flower of a Nasa humboldtiana subspecies called humboldtiana that was rediscovered by a team of botanists and citizen scientists for the first time in 162 years. The flower has four white petals, leading down to a center of pink petals.

These unusual plants had disappeared—until citizen scientists helped hunt them down

By Laura Baisas

A billboard displays a temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit during a record heat wave in Phoenix, Arizona on July 18, 2023. Swaths of the United States home to more than 80 million people were under heat warnings or advisories, as relentless, record-breaking temperatures continued to bake western and southern states.

July’s extreme heat waves ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change

By Laura Baisas

A young star named V960 Mon is at the center, with dusty material with the potential to form planets surrounding it. V960 Mon is located over 5000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Monoceros.

Dust clumps around a young star could one day form planets

By Laura Baisas

A baby lionhead rabbit sits in the grass. These domesticated rabbits are named after the lion-like mane around their faces.

Florida suburb is overrun by fluffy rabbits after breeder goes rogue

By Laura Baisas

A kākāpō chick. The birds are are large flightless parrots from New Zealand who are masters of camouflage and known for a booming call.

A flightless parrot is returning to mainland New Zealand after a 40-year absence

By Laura Baisas

A group of colorful spices on a wooden table with a mortar and pestle.

Leftovers of a 2,000-year-old curry discovered on stone cooking tools

By Laura Baisas

American actor Richard Dreyfuss (left) (as marine biologist Hooper) and British author and actor Robert Shaw (as shark fisherman Quint) look off the stern of Quint's fishing boat the 'Orca' at the terrifying approach of the mechanical giant shark dubbed 'Bruce' in a scene from the film 'Jaws' directed by Steven Spielberg, 1975.

Why the creators of ‘Jaws’ regretted making sharks the monsters

By Laura Baisas

This Hubble Space Telescope image of the asteroid Dimorphos was taken on December 19, 2022, about four months after the asteroid was impacted by NASA's DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test). Hubble’s sensitivity reveals a few dozen boulders knocked off the asteroid by the force of the collision. These are among the faintest objects Hubble has ever photographed inside the solar system.

Space Telescope

Smashed asteroid surrounded by a ‘cloud’ of boulders

By Laura Baisas

The sun sets over a large ice berg in Greenland, with a large chunk of fallen ice floating in the ocean. Greenland’s continental glacier covers about 80 percent of the 836,3000-square-mile land mass.

Greenland’s ice sheets aren’t as old—or as resilient—as scientists expected

By Laura Baisas

A saber tooth cat fossil is displayed during a press preview of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History on June 4, 2019.

Paleontologists discover two new sabertooth cat species

By Laura Baisas

High fiber foods, including coconuts, Brussel sprouts, squash, and spinach on a wooden table.

Chronic constipation could be a sign of a worsening health condition

By Laura Baisas

An artistic reconstruction showing how this 300,000 year-old stick would have been thrown on a hunt. Two men stand in a shallow body of water, with one aiming the stick towards three birds.

A javelin-like stick shows early humans may have been keen woodworkers

By Laura Baisas

This image taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) shows the young planetary system PDS 70, located nearly 400 light-years away from Earth. The system features a star at its center, around which the planet PDS 70 b is orbiting. On the same orbit as PDS 70b, astronomers have detected a cloud of debris that could be the building blocks of a new planet or the remnants of one already formed. The ring-like structure that dominates the image is a circumstellar disc of material, out of which planets are forming. There is in fact another planet in this system: PDS 70c, seen to the right of the inner rim of the disc.

New image reveals a Jupiter-like world that may share its orbit with a ‘twin’

By Laura Baisas

Aerial view of Shishaldin Volcano with Isanotski Peaks in the background, taken from a helicopter overflight during geology field work on Unimak Island in the Aleutians. August 15, 2018.

Alaska’s Shishaldin Volcano spews 5.5-mile-high ash cloud

By Laura Baisas

Currency printed by Franklin and his partner David Hall and later by the firm of Hall and William Sellers. Soon after establishing himself as an independent printer, Benjamin Franklin was awarded the “very profitable Jobb” of printing Pennsylvania bills of credit, partly because he had written and published a pamphlet on the need for paper currency in 1729.

Benjamin Franklin used science to protect his money from counterfeiters

By Laura Baisas

Illustration showing Repenomamus robustus as it attacks Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis moments before a volcanic debris flow buries them both about 125 million years ago.

This badger-like mammal may have died while trying to eat a dinosaur

By Laura Baisas

A preterm baby in an incubator in a neonatal intensive care unit. RSV sends about 58,000 children under five to the hospital every year in the United States.

FDA approves long-acting medication to protect babies from RSV

By Laura Baisas

A green sea turtle swims in the ocean.

Hungry green sea turtles have eaten in the same seagrass meadows for about 3,000 years

By Laura Baisas

In this artist’s rendering from 2020, the small white orb represents the white dwarf (a remnant of a long-dead sun-like star), while the purple foreground object is the newly discovered brown dwarf companion, confirmed by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. This faint brown dwarf was previously overlooked until being spotted by citizen scientists working with Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, a NASA-funded citizen science project.

A Jupiter-sized dwarf star burns half as hot as a campfire

By Laura Baisas

A protester stands next to a digital display of an unofficial heat reading at Furnace Creek Visitor Center during a heat wave in Death Valley National Park in Death Valley, California, on July 16, 2023. The signs read “this is the climate emergency,” and “happy death day.”

Extreme heat warning extends to more than 100 million people in the US

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s illustration of Alligator munensis, which is skimming the water with its eye out and surrounded by lush green trees. The large tooth sockets towards the back of its mouth suggest this extinct gator could crush shells and may have snacked on hard-shelled prey like snails.

Extinct snub-nosed gator had big teeth for crushing snails

By Laura Baisas

Multiple boxes of Diet Coke on a store shelf.

WHO categorizes aspartame as a possible carcinogen—but don’t panic

By Laura Baisas

A dire wolf reconstruction on exhibit at the La Brea Tar Pits & Museum.

Mighty saber-toothed cats and dire wolves probably had achy joints

By Laura Baisas

This image of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover at the rim of Belva Crater was taken by the agency’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during the rotorcraft’s 51st flight on April 22, 2023, the 772nd Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission. At the time the image was taken, the helicopter was at an altitude of about 40 feet.

NASA rover finds evidence of carbon-based chemistry in Martian crater

By Laura Baisas

Rows of birth control pills with the days of the week on the label.

FDA approves first over-the-counter birth control pill in the US

By Laura Baisas

An image of the northern Gulf of Mexico created from remote-sensing reflectance and chlorophyll measurements taken from newly reprocessed VIIRS data. Green water is seen closer to the coast, while it gets darker and more blue further out.

Scientists say the ocean is changing color—and it’s probably our fault

By Laura Baisas

A banded sea snake swimming freely

Some sea snakes may not be colorblind after all

By Laura Baisas

This is an artist impression of exoplanet LTT9779b orbiting its host star. The host star is located on the left as a large white circle with rays coming out of it in orange. The exoplanet is smaller and shown on the right of the image. The side of the exoplanet that is facing its host star is illuminated. The planet is around the size of Neptune and reflects 80% of the light shone on it, making it the largest known “mirror” in the Universe. The background of the image is black and speckled across the image is a starfield, showing innumerable stars of many sizes

The Milky Way’s shiniest known exoplanet has glittering metallic clouds

By Laura Baisas

Heavy rain sends mud and debris down the Ottauquechee River in Quechee, Vermont on July 10, 2023.

Dangerous inland flooding will last for days in some Northeast states

By Laura Baisas

A large group of shells on a beach. Organisms with hard, durable parts, like shells, are more likely to be preserved as fossils than organisms composed entirely of soft tissue.

The fossil record holds clues about modern-day marine ecology

By Laura Baisas

A honey bee pollinates a yellow flower against a bright blue sky.

Bee brains could teach robots to make split-second decisions

By Laura Baisas

Two male male rhesus macaques sit on the ground, one with his head down towards the other

Same-sex mounting in male macaques can help them reproduce more successfully

By Laura Baisas

A green and blue aurora borealis glows above a body of water and mountains.

Updated forecast shows northern lights won’t be visible in most US states this week

By Laura Baisas

A doctor points to multiple MRI's of the brain. A newly approved drug targets beta-amyloid, a brain protein that has long been believed by scientists to be one of the underlying causes of Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s-slowing drug Leqembi gains full FDA approval

By Laura Baisas

A four-legged spider mite sits on a plant.

Before spider mites mate, one of them gets their skin removed

By Laura Baisas

$A family plays a board game.$

Kids pick up math skills while playing certain board games

By Laura Baisas

Abortion rights demonstrators march behind a sign that reads "Abortion on demand and without apology," near the State Capitol in Austin, Texas on June 25, 2022. Abortion rights defenders fanned out across America on June 25 for a second day of protest against the Supreme Court's thunderbolt ruling, as state after conservative state moved swiftly to ban the procedure.

Texas saw a jump in its birth rate after banning most abortions, according to new study

By Laura Baisas

A recreation drawing of “The Ivory Lady.” Her remains date back to the Copper Age and her individual burial and the treasures in her tomb indicate that she possibly held the highest status in her society. She is seated above other members who are attentively listening to her. She is also adorned in a red top with a headdress.

Treasures from the ‘Ivory Lady’ tomb reveal a Copper Age woman’s extraordinary power

By Laura Baisas

Crotalus helleri snake

Stressed rattlesnakes just need a little help from their friends

By Laura Baisas

A Southwest Research Institute scientist named Norm Pelletier is wearing all white protective gear as he prepares the Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) for delivery and integration onto the European Space Agency’s JUICE spacecraft. As part of a 10-instrument payload to study Jupiter and its large moons, UVS will measure ultraviolet spectra that scientists will use to study the composition and structure of the atmospheres of these bodies and how they interact with Jupiter’s massive magnetosphere.

A toaster-sized NASA instrument captured a UV scene of the Milky Way

By Laura Baisas

Octopuses brooding near hydrothermal vents deep under water. The 19-day Octopus Odyssey expedition located a site of low temperature (7oC) hydrothermal venting with brooding octopus on an unnamed outcrop that was explored for the very first time on this trip.

New species of inkless octopus may have been found in Costa Rica’s deep seas

By Laura Baisas

Beach-goers seeking relief from the heat at Bolsa Chica State Beach in Huntington Beach California, on July 1, 2023.

July 3 may have marked the hottest day ever recorded

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of Anomalocaris, which lived 541 million to 530 million years ago during the Cambrian Period. The animal has two bulging eyes on the top of its head and spiny front appendages,

Ancient ‘weird shrimp from Canada’ used bizarre appendages to scarf up soft prey

By Laura Baisas

falcon perches on handler's glove, jersey shore attractions in background

The birds of summer patrolling Ocean City’s boardwalk

By Laura Baisas, Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet

The ringed planet Saturn imaged for the first time using near-infrared observations. The planet itself appears quite dark and the rings are bright.

Space Telescope

Saturn’s rings get a glow up in new near-infrared telescope images

By Laura Baisas

Common bottlenose dolphins swimming in Coffee Bay in South Africa.

Drones are following dolphins to spy on their complex social lives

By Laura Baisas

A painting of a group of prehistoric residents of Tabon Cave in the Philippines, featuring four individuals of varying ages, using fiber technology at Tabon Cave, 39 to 33,000 years ago. It was painted by Carole Chwval for the exhibition "Trajectories and Movements of the Philippine Identity," curated by Hermine Xhauflair and Eunice Averion.

Damage on 39,000-year-old tools may reveal a prehistoric ‘Age of Bamboo’

By Laura Baisas

A full moon known as the Buck Moon is seen as a deer grazes outside the village of Taarbaek, Denmark on July 14, 2022.

July’s skies heat up with the Buck Moon, a shimmery Venus, and more

By Laura Baisas

A fresco painted on a wall in the ancient city of Pompeii that depicts a focaccia with fruit and possibly pesto sauce on it. It is served on a silver tray and has a wine chalice next to it.

A fresco discovered in Pompeii looks like ancient pizza—but it’s likely focaccia

By Laura Baisas

A Cryo-EM map of a Fanzor protein indicated by gray, yellow, light blue, and pink in complex with ωRNA indicated in purple and its target DNA in red. Non-target DNA strand in blue.

These organisms have a natural gene-editing system that could be more useful than CRISPR

By Laura Baisas

A greater honeyguide feeding on beeswax with an open mouth in Niassa Special Reserve in Mozambique.

Badgers and birds may be teaming up to steal honey

By Laura Baisas

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