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These are the chemicals that give teens pungent body odor

Steroids and high levels of carboxylic acids in teenagers’ body odor give off a mix of pleasant and acrid scents.

The smallest known molecular knot is made of just 54 atoms

Here’s how tardigrades go into suspended animation.

‘On the Move’ examines how climate change will alter where people live

Journalist Abrahm Lustgarten explores which parts of the United States are most vulnerable to the effects of global warming and how people's lives might change.

Eavesdropping on fish could help us keep better tabs on underwater worlds

Earth’s oldest known earthquake was probably triggered by plate tectonics.

Bird flu has infected a person after spreading to cows. Here’s what to know

H5N1 has wreaked havoc on birds around the globe and occasionally made the jump to mammals, including cows. The risk to people remains low.

A new study has linked microplastics to heart attacks and strokes. Here’s what we know 

How patient-led research could speed up medical innovation.

Scientists are on a quest to log all the sounds of fish communication. The result could lead to better monitoring of ecosystems and fish behavior.

During a total solar eclipse, some colors really pop. Here’s why

Here’s why some pigeons do backflips.

How two outsiders tackled the mystery of arithmetic progressions

Computer scientists made progress on a decades-old puzzle in a subfield of mathematics known as combinatorics.

A predicted quasicrystal is based on the ‘einstein’ tile known as the hat

Here’s how much fruit you can take from a display before it collapses.

Physicists take a major step toward making a nuclear clock

By tweaking the energy of a thorium nucleus with a laser, scientists demonstrated a key step to building clocks based on the physics of atomic nuclei.

A teeny device can measure subtle shifts in Earth’s gravitational field

Science & society.

How a 19th century astronomer can help you watch the total solar eclipse

Astronomer Maria Mitchell’s observations of total solar eclipses from more than 100 years ago hold tips that are still relevant for watching an eclipse.

Timbre can affect what harmony is music to our ears

Not all cultures value happiness over other aspects of well-being.

Explore a map of the next 15 total solar eclipses

Check out our interactive map showing the path and timing for every total solar eclipse from 2024 to 2044.

The largest 3-D map of the universe reveals hints of dark energy’s secrets

AI learned how to sway humans by watching a cooperative cooking game

New research used the game Overcooked to show how offline reinforcement learning algorithms could teach bots to collaborate with — or manipulate — us.

Why large language models aren’t headed toward humanlike understanding

Could a rice-meat hybrid be what’s for dinner.

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