Science

Why the FDA banned the common food dye Red No. 3

Celtic women’s social and political standing in Iron Age England has received a genetic lift. DNA clues indicate that around 2,000 years ago, married women in a Celtic society, known as Durotrigians, on the coast of south-central England stayed in their home communities while their partners came from outside the area, say paleogeneticist Lara Cassidy…

Poison? What poison? Some bacteria may treat the powerful toxins bathing poison dart frog skin like a buffet.  The alkaloid chemicals that poison dart frogs wield on their skin increase the variety of microbial species living there, researchers report December 4 in Current Biology. Some of those microbes even seem to dine on the potent…

Lethal snake venom may be countered by new AI-designed proteins 

Soft diet, weak jaws. If red squirrels eat too many peanuts, their jaws end up weaker than the jaws of squirrels eating natural diets, researchers report January 15 in Royal Society Open Science. The results show that supplemental feeding can produce changes in squirrel morphology, potentially affecting their future success. The red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris)…

United by FireDenver Museum of Nature & ScienceAvailable wherever you get your podcasts For hundreds of millions of years, wildfires were directed solely by the weather, vegetation and terrain. But in the last century in the United States, people have sought to suppress even those beneficial fires that would otherwise clear out dead vegetation, which…

McKenzie Prillaman is a science and health journalist based in Washington, DC. She holds a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was the spring 2023 intern at Science News.

The viruses of cold and flu season are upon us, and in us, where they’re causing misery upon misery. But don’t worry. You can hop online, and for a mere $24.95, buy yourself a bottle of Zeebo Relief pills, designed to ease your bothersome symptoms. The key ingredient? Absolutely nothing. They’re placebos, and as such,…