A mucus-wicking robotic pill may offer a new way to deliver meds. The multivitamin-sized device houses a motor and a cargo hold for drugs, including ones that are typically given…
Category: Humans
False teeth could double as hearing aids
Prosthetic teeth could make great hearing aids. Vibrations applied to replacements for lost teeth travel well through jawbones to the inner ear, researchers report in the September Journal of the…
In Maya society, cacao use was for everyone, not just royals
In ancient Maya civilization, cacao wasn’t just for the elites. Traces of the sacred plant show up in ceramics from all types of neighborhoods and dwellings in and around a…
This face mask can sense the presence of an airborne virus
Face masks — the unofficial symbol of the COVID-19 pandemic — are leveling up. A mask outfitted with special electronics can detect SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and other…
Fossil finds put gibbons in Asia as early as 8 million years ago
Small-bodied, long-armed apes called gibbons swing rapidly through the trees, far outpacing scientists’ attempts to decipher these creatures’ evolutionary story. Now, a partial upper jaw and seven isolated teeth found…
5 people with lupus are in remission after CAR-T cell treatment
After receiving an experimental treatment to stop the body from attacking itself, five people no longer have any symptoms of lupus. That treatment, called CAR-T cell therapy, seems to have…
Poliovirus is spreading in New York. Here’s what you need to know
A particular kind of poliovirus is spreading in the United States. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed that the country now joins a list of around…
Humans may have started tending animals almost 13,000 years ago
Hunter-gatherer groups living in southwest Asia may have started keeping and caring for animals nearly 13,000 years ago — roughly 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. Ancient plant samples extracted…
How living in a pandemic distorts our sense of time
Time hasn’t made much sense since spring 2020 for many people, myself included. In February 2020, during the Before Times, my family traveled to Barcelona, a relatively carefree trip that…
Can’t comb your kid’s hair? This gene may be to blame
The flurry of frizzy-hair e-mails began in 2016. Human geneticist Regina Betz of University Hospital Bonn in Germany and her team had just linked three genes to a rare disorder…
