60-second Science

Theory has it yawning helps cool the brain—and it turns out animals with bigger brains do indeed tend to yawn longer. Christopher Intagliata reports.

With a shorter season of sea ice, polar bears have less access to marine mammals. But switching to a terrestrial diet deprives them of the fatty seal meals they need to thrive.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The parachute flower smells like alarm pheromones of a honeybee, to attract tiny flies that feed on bees under attack.

A technique called “biosparging” relies on pumping oxygen underground to help naturally occurring microorganisms multiply and consume oil spills.    

When rain fills the massive footprints left by elephants, communities of aquatic invertebrates quickly move in Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Future wet suits with surface textures like the thick fur of otters that trap insulating air layers could keep tomorrow's divers warmer in icy waters.  

Female applicants to postdoctoral positions in geosciences were nearly half as likely to receive excellent letters of recommendation, compared with their male counterparts. Christopher Intagliata reports

Jean-Pierre Sauvage, James Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa share the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.  

David J. Thouless, F. Duncan Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz split the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.  

Japan's Yoshinori Ohsumi wins the 2016 prize for discoveries related to autophagy, the process in cells whereby they degrade some of their internal structures and send the parts out for recycling.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reseachers have started to examine the genetic traces of the movement of some six million African-Americans from the south to the north and west between 1910 and 1970.  

A housefly relative appears to be key to the reproductive success of a hardy tundra shrub. But the insect is threatened by the warming climate. Christopher Intagliata reports.

A protein from microscopic creatures called tardigrades keeps their DNA protected—and could someday shield humans from radiation.  

When the sun, moon and Earth are aligned, high tidal stress may increase the chances that an earthquake will grow bigger than it otherwise might have been.

An ant walking in the desert can gauge distance by footsteps and the sun's position, but an ant being carried can estimate distance by visual information perceived as it passed by.  

Researchers used high-tech visualization techniques to peer inside an ancient scroll too fragile to unwrap.  

The branches of birch trees in Europe sagged by as much as four inches at night compared with daytime.  

A chromosomal rearrangement may cause one mosquito species to be lured to cows instead of humans for a blood meal. Christopher Intagliata reports.

Drinkers surrounded by even more inebriated people feel less drunk than a breathalyzer test indicates they actually are. Christopher Intagliata reports.

Fabric dyed with indigo just found in Peru is some 1,600 years older than indigo-dyed fabrics that have been found in the Middle East.