Michael Sanchez was testing out his new camera when he happened upon a feathered subject. The blue rock-thrush he photographed on the coast of northern Oregon last week has excited the birding world.
What's a typical vacation activity for doctors? Work. A new study finds that most physicians do work on a typical day off. In this essay, a family doctor considers why that is and why it matters.
Weliton Menário Costa's award-winning music video showcases his research on kangaroo personality and behavior — and offers a celebration of human diversity, too.
When marijuana becomes a Schedule III instead of a Schedule I substance under federal rules, researchers will face fewer barriers to studying it. But there will still be some roadblocks for science.
Wildlife ecologists have seen white-tailed deer expanding their range in North America over many decades. And since the early-2000s these deer have moved north into the boreal forests of western Canada. These forests are full of spruce and pine trees, sandy soil and freezing winters with lots of snow. They can be a harsh winter wonderland. And ecologists haven't known whether a warmer climate in these forests or human land development might be driving the deer north. A recent study tries to disentangle these factors – and finds that a warming climate seems to play the most significant role in the movement of deer.
It is "the first known case of active wound treatment in a wild animal with a medical plant," biologist Isabelle Laumer told NPR. She says the orangutan, called Rakus, is now thriving.
Federal health officials say the U.S. has the building blocks to make a vaccine to protect humans from bird flu, if needed. But experts warn we're nowhere near prepared for another pandemic.
Women under 60 can benefit from hormone therapy to treat hot flashes and other symptoms of menopause. That's according to a new study, and is a departure from what women were told in the past.
No matter what you're doing right now – sitting, standing, walking – you're moving. First, because Earth is spinning around on its axis. This rotation is the reason we have days. Second, because Earth and other planets in our solar system are orbiting the sun. That's why we have years. Third, you're moving because the sun and the rest of our solar system is orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy at over 500,000 miles per hour. If all of that isn't nauseating enough, everything in the entire universe is expanding outward. All the time.
But in the 1970s, astrophysicists noticed something strange about our galactic neighborhood, or Local Group. The whole clump of neighboring galaxies was being pulled off course at over one million miles per hour, towards something we couldn't see — the "Great Attractor." This Great Attractor sits in the "Zone of Avoidance," an area of space that is blocked from view by the stars and gas of the Milky Way. Today on the show, host Regina G. Barber talks to astrophysicist Jorge Moreno about this mysterious phenomenon: What it might be and what will happen when we eventually reach it.
Curious about other cosmic mysteries? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
The time a person has to decide whether to have an abortion in Florida and other states with six-week abortion bans is at most two weeks. Why? It's has to do with how we date early pregnancy.
A rise in breast cancer among younger women prompted the U.S. Preventive Task Force to issue new screening guidelines. They recommend mammograms every other year, starting at age 40.
Some birds kill their siblings soon after hatching. Other birds spend their whole lives with their siblings and will even risk their lives to help each other.
A therapy that restores brain cells impaired by a rare genetic disorder may offer a strategy for treating conditions like autism, epilepsy, and schizophrenia.