Vampire Healing: Young Blood Can Mend Old Broken Bones

It’s old blood, not old bones, that makes fracture healing difficult among the elderly

May 19, 2015

Your Online Dating Profile Picture Affects Whether People Trust You

Attractiveness is linked to trust, but the responses are very different between men and women

May 8, 2015

Veggie Power? Artificial Muscles Made From Blinged-Out Onions

Turning root vegetables into working muscles requires gold, electricity and imagination

May 5, 2015

Genes Make Some People More Attractive to Mosquitoes

Certain body odors appear to entice the pesky bloodsuckers—and those smells may be hereditary

April 22, 2015

Dog Gazes Hijack the Brain’s Maternal Bonding System

When a dog looks into your eyes, it’s bonding with you in the same way babies bond with their human moms

April 16, 2015

Pulling Your Hair Out? It Might Just Help Reverse Baldness

Plucking hair could be a counterintuitive way to fight balding, according to a study of quorum sensing in rat follicles

April 9, 2015

Like Tiny Scientists, Babies Learn Best By Focusing on Surprising Objects

Lab tests suggest that infants learn more about the world around them when they encounter and investigate unexpected phenomena

April 2, 2015

Medical Holograms Are Now Part of the Surgeon’s Toolkit

Technology hitting the market will help doctors examine heart conditions or check for colon cancer without breaking the skin

March 27, 2015

Modern Marijuana Is Often Laced With Heavy Metals and Fungus

Medical and recreational marijuana use is increasingly legal—but do consumers know what they’re smoking?

March 23, 2015

Politicians Are More Persuasive During Interactive Town Hall Meetings

When given a chance at direct persuasion, most politicians are surprisingly good at changing our minds

March 16, 2015

With Wearable Devices That Monitor Air Quality, Scientists Can Crowdsource Pollution Maps

Emerging technology means anyone with a smartphone can become a mobile environmental monitoring station

March 12, 2015

New Drawings Show the Strange Beauty of Phages, the Bacteria Slayers

Phage viruses rearrange genes, prey on bacteria and maintain microbial diversity. Can we harness them to do our bidding?

March 9, 2015

Use Virtual Reality to Eliminate That Pain in Your Neck

Altering visual perceptions can trick the brains of chronic sufferers so they can enjoy pain-free motion

February 26, 2015

Hunger Makes You Buy More Stuff, Even If It’s Not Food

Whether you’re shopping at the mall or online, having the munchies will compel you to purchase extraneous things

February 18, 2015

What Physics Tells Us About Making the Perfect Chocolate

Like carbon, the treat can take on many crystalline forms, so a master chocolatier must know how to temper it in just the right way

February 13, 2015

Help for the Brokenhearted: Wearable, Biosynthetic and ‘Beatless’ Artificial Hearts

Cow-machine hybrids and continuous-flow technologies are helping people survive devastating heart failure

February 12, 2015

Toenail Physics Explains Why Big Toes Are More Likely to Suffer Ingrown Nails

The delicate balancing act between stresses of growth and adhesion can help demystify some painful nail disorders

February 2, 2015

A Universal Flu Vaccine May Be On the Horizon

Choosing the viral targets for the seasonal flu vaccine is a gamble. Sometimes, like this year, the flu wins

January 26, 2015

Social Media Is Not Making You a Ball of Stress

But perhaps unsurprisingly, Facebook and Twitter can cause stress to spread when bad things happen to friends and family

January 15, 2015

A New Antibiotic Found in Dirt Can Kill Drug-Resistant Bacteria

Tests in mice show that the new drug works against numerous nasty diseases and should stay viable for decades

January 7, 2015