When Bats Squeak, They Tend To Squabble
Researchers have found new clues to how bats communicate. And it turns out they tend to argue — a lot. The research could lead to a broader understanding of animal communication.
Science
By Returning To Farming's Roots, He Found His American Dream
David Fisher's farm is a kind of American Dream. Not the conventional one of upward economic mobility. This is the utopian version, the uncompromising pursuit of a difficult agrarian ideal.
From Psychedelics To Alzheimer's, 2016 Was A Good Year For Brain Science
A woman with ALS was able to type just by thinking about the letters, and people with cancer found their anxiety and depression erased by a single encounter with magic mushrooms.
'Panda Grandpa' Pan Pan Dies In China
Pan Pan, who died this week at the age of 31, was known as the "panda grandpa": He has some 130 descendants worldwide, accounting for a quarter of the world's captive giant pandas.
The Predictive Power Of The Junk In Your Genome
You are you because of a unique combination of your parents' genes, coded into the strands of DNA molecules, coiled tightly around an “X-shaped” structure. This is a chromosome, and you have 23 pairs of them, deep down in the nucleus of all 37 trillion cells in your body.
Dr. Beth Sullivan, Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University, studies chromosome rearrangements in her lab and how they may cause disease.
QUIZ: Test Your Knowledge Of NPR's Tech Stories From 2016
A bar owner who wants patrons to put away their phones, Internet users tracking down a vandal, a project to analyze hundreds of Rembrandt paintings — can you remember (or guess) what happened?
The Wrong Eating Habits Can Hurt Your Brain, Not Just Your Waistline
A diet high in saturated fats and sugars can affect the parts of the brain that are important to memory. Diet-linked brain changes can also make people more likely to crave unhealthful food.
As A Rough Year Ends, We Turn To The Cosmos For Some Perspective
As 2016 winds down, we take a moment to contemplate the billions of years that led to 2017 and the billions more yet to come.
Is It Possible To Die Of Grief?
Actress Debbie Reynolds died just one day after her daughter Carrie Fisher's sudden death — which has led some to speculate that grief might have been a contributing factor.
With A Leap Second, 2016 Promises To Linger Just A Little Bit Longer
To keep our system of time in sync with Earth's rotation, the world's foremost timekeepers are adding an extra second to 2016. For such a small thing, the leap second has some big implications.