Sacha Vignieri

3 weeks ago | science.org | Maria Fernandez |María Fernández |Pearse J. Buchanan |Brent Grocholski |Sacha Vignieri

Passive Cooling A cool paintBrent GrocholskiConceptual drawing of combined evaporative-radiative cooling paint. The top and exterior of buildings can be used to passively cool, but this requires materials with the right properties to do so effectively. Fei et al. designed a paint that cools both radiatively and through evaporation and that appears to keep buildings relatively cool even in humid environments.

1 month ago | science.org | Karsten Schuhmann |Adam Shaw |Sacha Vignieri |Jelena Stajic

Evolutionary Biology A bevy of behemothsSacha VignieriArtist’s illustration of the giant ground sloth, Megatherium americanum, one of many sloth species that thrived in the Americas before human arrival. ILLUSTRATION: MAURICIO ANTON/SCIENCE SOURCEToday, there are six species of sloths, all of which have similar ecologies such as arboreality and a slow metabolism. These species are a tiny remnant of a once diverse American clade that was mostly made up of large-bodied species. Boscaini et al.

1 month ago | science.org | Karsten Schuhmann |Adam Shaw |Sacha Vignieri |Stella Hurtley

Wildlife Disease A grim and unknown tollSacha VignieriAvian influenza, H5N1, has affected birds for decades. Less well known are its catastrophic effects in marine mammal populations, with recent estimates of mortalities in the tens of thousands across species. Campagna et al. modeled the long-term consequences of an H5N1 outbreak in an Argentine breeding colony of southern elephant seals in 2023 that killed nearly all the pups and an unknown number of adults.

1 month ago | science.org | Sarah Crespi |Sacha Vignieri |Jonathan Moens

frans lemmens/Alamy Stock Photo First up on the podcast, freelance journalist Jonathan Moens talks with host Sarah Crespi about a forensic test called brain electrical oscillation signature profiling, which police in India are using along with other techniques to try to tell whether a suspect participated in a crime, despite these technologies’ extremely shaky scientific grounding. Next on the show, scientists have recently made strides in our understanding of horses, from identifying the...

2 months ago | science.org | Guan Wang |Jedediah F. Brodie |Thao-Quyen Nguyen |Sacha Vignieri

Natural History The bone collectorSacha VignieriBone collector caterpillars, seen here, evade detection by forming a portable case made of discarded insect body parts. PHOTO: UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII INSECT SYSTEMATICS AND BIODIVERSITY LABThe vast majority of lepidopteran caterpillars are herbivorous. Those that break this rule tend to do so in unexpected ways, such as the Hawaiian inchworm, which is an ambush predator. Rubinoff et al.