American and Canadian marine scientists -- and one talented dog -- are seizing an unexpected opportunity presented by the coronavirus pandemic. They are trying to establish whether Pacifc Northwest whales benefit from the current drop in boat traffic and underwater noise. Read More
The black hole is roughly 1,000 light-years from Earth — and more than 2,000 light-years closer than the next one known. What's more, scientists say, it may be just "the tip of an exciting iceberg." Continue Reading Scientists Find Read More
In a study recently published in the Journal of Wildlife Management, WSU scientists found that lynx only occupy about 20% of potential habitat in Washington. Continue Reading Big Study Finds Small Territory Usage For Washington’s Read More
The Trump administration is investigating the theory that the virus leaked from a lab. Scientists who work with viruses say that's virtually impossible and point to transmission from an animal. Continue Reading Virus Researchers Cast Doubt On Read More
An overblown immune response could be killing a portion of the sick, and some doctors think that new treatments being tested could help at least some of those patients. Continue Read More
Will the current lull in activity make a difference in the air we breathe or the future of climate change? Continue Reading As Many People Stay Home, Will The Environment Improve — At Least Temporarily?Read More
What's behind the "14 days of self-quarantine" guidance after exposure to someone with COVID-19 or after travel from a place with a high number of cases? Think of yourself as a potential incubator. Continue Reading The Science Behind A Read More
Even though large predators sometimes leave food that smaller predators scavenge, turns out, it’s actually dangerous for smaller animals to eat the leftovers. Continue Reading ‘Fatal Attraction’: Seen On Movie Screens … And In Read More
As the coronavirus spreads more widely around the globe, scientists are starting to use a powerful new tool: a blood test that identifies people who have previously been exposed to the virus. Continue Reading How A Coronavirus Blood Test Could Read More
Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who was one of NASA's human "computers" and an unsung hero of the space agency's early days, died Monday. She calculated the flight path for America's first crewed space mission and moon landing, and she was among the women profiled in the book and movie Hidden Figures. She was 101. Read More
Doctors wanted to ensure they didn't compromise parts of the brain necessary for playing the violin, so they asked their musician patient to play for them mid-operation. Continue Reading Musician Plays Her Violin During Brain SurgeryRead More
Dr. Ananda Prasad first turned up zinc's benefits to human growth back in the 1960s. Years later, his study and others found that the right dose of zinc can cut a cold's duration by days. Continue Reading Taking Zinc Can Read More
Potatoes were once considered aphrodisiacs. Photo Credit: Hannah Whisenant When you think of aphrodisiacs, what images come to mind? An oyster on the half shell? A glass of wine? A… Continue Reading Magic In The Making: Food And LoveRead More
The two-minute warning that had held over the past two years has now shrunk to 100 seconds before midnight on the Doomsday Clock set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Continue Reading The End May Be Nearer: Doomsday Read More
Making art is fun. But there's a lot more to it. It might serve an evolutionary purpose — and emerging research shows that it can help us process difficult emotions and tap into joy. Continue Reading Get Artsy For Health And Science: How Making Read More
An Oregon conservation group is exploring a cave to discover new spider species. Continue Reading A Father-Daughter Journey To Northwest Caves In Search Of Creepy CrawlersRead More
Carbon capture technology is slowly being integrated into energy and industrial facilities across the globe. Typically set up to collect carbon from an exhaust stream, this technology sops up greenhouse gases before they spread into Earth’s airways. Read More
Companies are trying to figure out the risks to their profits from a warming planet. Some of them are turning to high-tech tools of climate science. Continue Reading As The Climate Warms, Companies Scramble To Calculate The Risk Read More
Depression symptoms dropped significantly in a group of young adults who ate a Mediterranean-style diet for three weeks. It's the latest study to show that food can influence mental health. Continue Reading Study: Changing Diet Can Help Boost Read More
It starts out like a common viral respiratory illness but leads to terrifying symptoms, including paralysis. Could a common virus be behind the illness? Continue Reading What Causes A Rare Disease That Paralyzes Kids? Researchers Read More
Climate change is causing people in Washington to spend billions of dollars in healthcare costs. That’s according to a new study that looked at how hospital visits and early deaths during a recent wildfire season. Continue Reading Read More
Scientists have detected a marine heat wave off the West Coast that they say is reminiscent of the massive stretch of warm water nicknamed “the Blob” in 2014-15. Continue Reading Return Of ‘The Blob’? Marine Read More
Researchers have long hoped to find out if genes contribute to sexual orientation. A new study of genetic data from thousands of people hints there may be some link, but it's still far from clear. Continue Reading Search For ‘Gay Gene’ Comes Read More
An underwater volcano is thought to have produced a sheet of pumice that stretches 58 square miles. Continue Reading Giant Pumice Raft Floating Towards Australia Could Help Replenish Great Barrier ReefRead More
A new study is just the latest evidence that a family of pesticides called neonicotinoids, sometimes just called "neonics," can pose risks to the insect world that are not fully understood. Continue Reading New Evidence Shows Read More
Dozens of Northwest doctors are teaming up with a national nonprofit to write a different kind of prescription. Their "park prescriptions" direct patients with obesity, anxiety, depression or certain chronic conditions to spend more time outside. Read More
Hyena-pig. Murder-cow. With no modern analog, scientists have resorted to combinations of common animals to describe it. Dug up decades ago in the Hancock Mammal Quarry near John Day, Oregon, the bone from this prehistoric creature languished, misidentified in museum storage, until Selina Robson pulled it from its drawer. Read More
A review of "mussel-inspired chemistry" points to promising ways we can learn from mussels about how to clean up water. Continue Reading Could Mussels Teach Us How To Clean Up Oil Spills?Read More
Oregon State University has established what it considers to be the nation's largest hemp research center. This comes amid a surge of farmer interest in the Northwest to grow the non-psychoactive cousin of marijuana. Continue Read More
Compared with monkeys, humans have a brain that is extremely sensitive to a sound's pitch. And that may reflect our exposure to speech and music. Continue Reading A Musical Brain May Help Us Understand Language And Appreciate Read More
A congressional committee has upheld a prohibition against the Food and Drug Administration considering using gene-edited embryos to establish pregnancies. Continue Reading U.S. House Committee Votes To Continue Ban On Genetically Read More
As a U.S. Department of Energy plane flew over the Amazon rainforest, it sipped and sampled air in real time. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientist Manish Shrivastava sampled the air over the Amazon to come up with a scientifically accurate baseline of pre-industrial air. Read More
Volcanoes have been crucial to life on earth. Oozing lava helped form our planet's land masses. Gases from volcanoes helped create our atmosphere. But despite the growing field of volcanology, there's still a lot we don't understand about volcanic eruptions. Continue Read More
Imagine spending 40 years and more than a billion dollars on a gamble. That's what one U.S. government science agency did. It's now paying off big time, with new discoveries about black holes and exotic neutron stars coming almost every week LIGO, with one observation facility near Hanford, Wash. Read More
The waters of genetic meddling are murky; in a new book, technology futurist Jamie Metzl reviews where we've been in the past as a guideline for where we might be headed. Continue Reading BOOK REVIEW: ‘Hacking Read More
The world is seeing the first-ever image of a black hole Wednesday, as an international team of researchers from the Event Horizon Telescope project released their look at the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy Messier 87 (M87). The image shows a dark disc "outlined by emission from hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its Read More
A study in Nature Neuroscience demonstrates a link between mismatched brain rhythms and declines in working memory in older adults and shows that a precise form of electrical stimulation applied to the scalp can coax these brain areas back into sync. Read More
On April 1, scientists will officially restart their search for gravitational waves after a year spent making improvements to massive twin detectors. Discoveries should soon start rolling in, and when they do, there's a good chance the news will be translated into a Native American language called Blackfoot, or Siksika. Read More
People with Celiac disease are a bit closer to enjoying gluten products again. With the help of genetic modification, a team of Northwest scientists have engineered a unique wheat variety that’s safe for people with gluten sensitivities and allergies. Read More
Broecker was an early advocate for reducing fossil fuels to avoid the disruptive effects of climate change and brought the term "global warming" into the mainstream. Continue Reading ‘Grandfather Of Climate Science’ Wallace Broecker Dies Read More
John Bohannon, founder of Science magazine's "Dance Your Ph.D." contest, presents the 2018 winner, Pramodh Senarath Yapa. He won over judges with his choreographic rendition of some chaotic electrons. Continue Reading Ph.D. Student Read More
Ethan Lindenberger is 18 years old, but had never received vaccines for diseases like hepatitis, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, or the chickenpox. Lindenberger's mother, Jill Wheeler, is anti-vaccine. He said she has been influenced by online misinformation, such as a debunked study that claimed certain vaccines were linked with autism, or a theory that vaccines cause Read More
For the last 35 years, the snowpack in the West’s mountains has resisted the impacts of global warming. But that could soon change, according to a new study out of Oregon State University. Continue Reading Snowpack In The West Has Read More
Is jogging in the cold this winter any better than hitting a treadmill in a warm gym? How about jumping into a frigid ocean for a swim? We asked some leading physiologists to weigh in. Continue Reading Could Read More
The first images of the object, just a few pixels wide, arrived Tuesday morning. Higher-resolution photographs will be sent back to the earth in the coming weeks. Continue Reading NASA Probe Sends Pictures Of A Tiny Planet 4 Billion Read More
Apparently, salmon don’t like the smell of watercress. The aroma of shrimp doesn’t pique their interest either. And the fragrance, eu de steelhead? A definite no-go. Continue Reading Scent Research Could Help More Salmon Find Their Way HomeRead More
Bees exposed to a type of insecticides called neonicotinoids dramatically changed their behavior — becoming sluggish, antisocial and spending less time caring for the colony's young, researchers say. Continue Reading Study: A Read More
Ask Dr. Universe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlB-IObBFo0&list=PL6pHcbVJ2q0Fk-wRbMlYR4TZIzjZkXKWC&index=8Northwest Public Broadcasting and Washington State University Communications teamed up to bring Dr. Universe to life, well at least to an animated series. Do you have a… Read More
Ask Dr. Universe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3uM9c4BdiE&list=PL6pHcbVJ2q0Fk-wRbMlYR4TZIzjZkXKWC&index=7Northwest Public Broadcasting and Washington State University Communications teamed up to bring Dr. Universe to life, well at least to an animated series. Do you have a… Read More
Ask Dr. Universe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP7vkuYZaEg&index=6&list=PL6pHcbVJ2q0Fk-wRbMlYR4TZIzjZkXKWCNorthwest Public Broadcasting and Washington State University Communications teamed up to bring Dr. Universe to life, well at least to an animated series. Do you have a… Read More