Science X Dialog

For centuries, physicians observed that nuns, who are celibate, had much higher rates of breast cancer, leading to the theory that pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding might be associated with lower breast cancer risk. ...

Graphene is often described as a wonder material. It is strong, electrically conductive, thermally efficient, and remarkably versatile. Yet despite more than a decade of excitement, many graphene-based technologies still ...

How common are Earth-like planets in the universe? When I started working on supernova explosions, I never imagined that my research would eventually lead me to ask a question about the origin of Earth-like planets. Yet that ...

Just when we thought we had described all the possible marine environmental recipients of plastic pollution, new research comes in to overturn the picture.

One of the oldest unsolved riddles in planetary science concerns the origin of the moon. Over a century ago, George Darwin proposed that tidal and centrifugal forces on a rapidly rotating proto-Earth caused the moon to be ...

Tropical storms such as typhoons, hurricanes, and cyclones are Earth's most powerful weather systems. Born over warm oceans, they travel thousands of kilometers to land, traversing waters now polluted with plastics, from ...

For much of my career, I have been fascinated by the ways in which materials behave when we reduce their dimensions to the nanoscale. Over and over, I've learned that when we shrink a material down to just a few nanometers ...

Imagine holding a narrow tube filled with salty water and watching it begin to freeze from one end. You might expect the ice to advance steadily and push the salt aside in a simple and predictable way. Yet the scene that ...

What if your conscious experiences were not just the chatter of neurons, but were connected to the hum of the universe? In a paper published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, I present new evidence indicating that conscious ...

For nearly a century, scientists have understood how crystalline materials—such as metals and semiconductors—bend without breaking. Their secret lies in tiny, line-like defects called dislocations, which move through ...

When we talk about "patient engagement" in research, it can sound like a slogan on a grant application rather than something that changes people's lives.

For some people, the mention of voodoo evokes something like a scene from the James Bond novel "Live and Let Die," featuring occult ceremonies with snakes and animal sacrifice. Animal sacrifice was widespread among human ...