The Scientist spoke with Rachel Zeig-Owens, the director of epidemiology for the World Trade Center Health Program, about what scientists have learned after two decades of studying illness and disease among survivors.

Leiden University’s Carel ten Cate tracked down 34-year-old duck recordings—and the man who made them—to verify that musk ducks are capable of vocal learning, an ability that hadn’t been thought to exist in waterfowl.

The Scientist spoke to marine biologist Tim Lynch, who dusted off 25-year-old data from his PhD to figure out why olive sea snakes approach divers so often. He says the animals, especially the males, likely confuse people for potential mates.

CDC investigators continue to search for the source of the bacteria that caused four infections—two of them lethal—in four different states. The Scientist spoke with melioidosis expert Bart Currie about the disease.

Rather than relying on samples that need to be shipped in glass vials and on ice, researchers have developed a new method that allows mouse sperm to be sent easily at room temperature using standard mail delivery.

A patient caught the rare disease in Nigeria before flying through two US airports, exposing more than 200 people from 27 states.

Lateral flow tests for COVID-19 can be very accurate and specific when used as directed, but introducing acidic fluids can cause the tests’ detecting antibodies to clump, which may read as a positive result.

Six GPS-tracked wild cats wandered closer to Santa Cruz, California, and surrounding towns as human activity died down under shelter-in-place orders last March.

A New York Times investigation’s failure to amplify tuna DNA from Subway’s tuna salad sandwiches likely says more about the complexities of identifying processed fish than about the ingredients.

A study of 19 postmenopausal women found that eating a bar of chocolate in the morning affected their bodies differently than eating it at night, but neither led to weight gain.

Researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford are exposing healthy volunteers to SARS-CoV-2 for science.

Collecting data on the various races, sexual orientations, and gender identities of editors at 25 scientific and medical journals, researchers document the underrepresentation of minority groups.

Turkish officials are scrambling to clean up a massive, gooey plankton bloom that’s sliming the country’s ports and could suffocate the area’s marine ecosystems.

The culture of academia can make disabled scientists wary of disclosing their conditions or needs. Molecular biologist Justin Yerbury suggests how the system might become more inclusive. 

The World Health Organization–led program will promote equity in addition to facilitating access to samples, a WHO official involved in the project tells The Scientist.

Avoiding inbreeding appears to be the exception rather than the norm for animals, according to a new meta-analysis of experimental studies.

A modeling study of boarding behavior finds filling the plane from back to front extends the close contact time between passengers and therefore increases the risks posed by air travel.

A founder of the field of synthetic biology is selling data from his own DNA as a nonfungible token, or NFT, through Nebula Genomics, a personal genome company he cofounded.

When conservationists relocate species, they don’t always account for the pathogens hitching a ride, and the consequences of introducing them to a new environment.