Science Magazine

2 days ago | science.org | Christie Wilcox

Today’s The Life Academic looks at the kerfuffle over apparent AI use in generating last week’s Make America Healthy Again report. But first, catch up on the latest science news, including leprosy’s ancient American roots. Climatology  |  Science Current climate policies aren’t enough to save glaciers from melting Melting of the ice cap on top of Africa’s highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro, affects local communities and ecosystems.

4 days ago | science.org | Christie Wilcox

Today’s Visualized takes a new look at the Sun. But first, catch up on the latest science news, including how not all deer act like deer in headlights. Paleontology  |  Science Dinosaurs of a feather nested together in the Cretaceous Arctic A new study finds that birds nested in the Arctic alongside non-avian dinosaurs (as shown in this artist’s illustration) during the Cretaceous period.  Gabriel Ugueto Today, birds like puffins and ivory gulls tough out life in the frigid Arctic.

5 days ago | science.org | Jeffrey Brainard

Groundbreaking scientific research with lasting impact is on the rise. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which found that the share of papers that are “persistently disruptive”—a new metric the authors developed—rose about fivefold from 1900 to 2019. The results add nuance to the narrative, advanced in several previous studies, that innovativeness has declined across many scientific fields because researchers are increasingly reliant on narrow existing knowledge within their subdisciplines.

5 days ago | science.org | Michael Price

For more than a century, scientists thought leprosy was an Old World disease with a single culprit. The bacterium Mycobacterium leprae had ravaged Europe, Asia, and Africa for thousands of years and was introduced to the Americas by European colonists and enslaved people from Africa about 500 years ago. But in 2008, researchers discovered a second species, M. lepromatosis, circulating in Mexico. Whether that, too, had arrived with Europeans or was native to the Americas was unclear.

6 days ago | science.org | Adrian Cho

In a time of great anxiety over U.S. government support for science, theoretical physicists have received some reassuring news. Larry Leinweber, a philanthropist who made his fortune in the software industry, is giving $90 million to establish endowed institutes in theoretical physics at three leading research universities and one private institution, the Leinweber Foundation announced today. The money will be used mainly to support postdocs and graduate students.