Science & Health

Illustration: A child watching television

How a Child Watches Movies Can Help Detect Autism, Israeli Scientist Claims

Children on the spectrum evince idiosyncratic, uneven gaze patterns compared with non-ASD children, says Ben-Gurion University’s Ilan Dinstein

Image of a bacterium with external pili (filaments), showing DNA and plasmids inside

How We Created Superbugs by Provoking Primordial Superpowers in Bacteria

Antibiotic resistance may have evolved before dinosaurs, let alone before doctors began over-prescribing the drugs. But irresponsible practitioners and filthy food workers are still to blame for the current crisis

Tamir Gilat in 2019. 'I figure I’m one of the only people in the world who participated in two clinical trials that yielded life-saving treatments.'

'I'm the Lab Rat': The Man Who Survived Three Deadly Cancers Thanks to Groundbreaking Israeli Research

The doctors suggested Tamir Gilat make a farewell trip. But a decade later he is thriving thanks to groundbreaking Israeli researches he now strives to fund

A bluebottle hangs upside down from a leaf, which is the same thing as hanging upside down from the ceiling.

Mystery Solved: How Flies Land Upside Down

Flies fly with their feet pointing toward the ground. How do they achieve that inverted landing? Inquiring minds have finally figured it out

Flash In the Pan-Sahara World’s Fastest Ant Speeds Across Sahara at a Record-breaking 3 Kilometers an Hour

Science discovers how the silver ant survives and thrives in Tunisian mid-day heat of 70 degrees Celsius when seeking its deceased prey

Doctors Against Dairy: Cheese Linked to Breast Cancer Risk

Petition signed by 12,000 American doctors calls on FDA to require warning labels on cheeses

A reconstruction of the large meat-eating dinosaur Siamraptor.

Paleontological Surprise: Gigantic Predator Dinosaur May Have Arisen in Asia

Meet Siamraptor: Bigger than T-rex and cousin to allosaurs, a previously unknown, primitive form of Carcharodontosaurus was found in Thailand for the first time

credit: royaltystockphoto.com / Shutters

Pavlov’s Amoebas: They May Not Have Brains, but They Have Memory

Unicellular animals can remember where food is for up to 90 minutes and will overcome obstacles to get to it, Israeli-Spanish collaboration shows

The cockroach team, giving their acceptance speech and tossing rubber cockroaches at the audience at the Ig Nobel prize ceremony, Sept. 12, 2019.

Magnetized Dead Cockroaches Study Wins Ig Nobel — and It’s Amazingly Interesting

Quantum physicists were shocked that live and dead cockroaches evinced strikingly different magnetic properties, and then they figured it out

What’s That Cat Spraying on Your Shoes? Not What You Thought

Everything you ever wanted to know about feline anal secretions, courtesy of scientists at UC Davis

Newly Identified 8-foot Electric Eel Delivers Strongest Shock in Animal Kingdom

It isn’t that nobody realized there were huge, dangerous electric fish in the Amazon rivers, just that science thought they were a single species — until now

Yilingia spiciformis body fossil (left), trace (right), and artist's reconstruction (center).

This Creature Marched to Its Death Half a Billion Years Ago

An animal that looked like a cross between a trilobite and a wheat sheaf scurried around 550 million years ago, died and was fossilized in its tracks — thus throwing back the dawn of segmented Animalia

The new species of whale, Berardius minimus

Unknown Mini-whale That Japanese Knew About All Along Discovered in Pacific

The diminutive Berardius minimus is shorter and darker than other beaked whales and there may be another unacknowledged species out there too

Fish in the Mediterranean and benthic life suffer in heatwaves

Heatwaves in the Mediterranean Sea Are Bigger, Hotter and Last Longer

Water temperature anomalies can cover half the Mediterranean basin and last for weeks, decimating animals and fish – but in deep water, it’s even worse, a new study shows

Cow genomes could be manipulated to produce less methane, some scientists suggest

As Fracking Poisons the Air, Israeli Scientists Propose to Engineer Cows

Tackling methane emissions is the ‘low-hanging fruit to slow global warming,’ says scientist behind Cornell fracking study

A doctor performs an ultrasound at a hospital in Chicago, August 7, 2018.

Home Birth Is No More Dangerous Than Hospital Deliveries, Study Shows

Newborns’ mortality and morbidity are the same for low-risk pregnancies according research based on 14 studies charting some 1 million women

Life Really Can Overcome Anything: How Bacteria Survive 250 Meters Under the Dead Sea

Scientists discovered new life in one of the most extreme environments in the world: Bacteria living on dead ancient microorganisms – which may have implications for finding life on Mars

Animals Can Be Engineered to Have Only Girls. That Won’t Help Crazy Dictators

Prof. Udi Qimron and his Tel Aviv University team mutate mice to have single-sex offspring; female or male. He explains why despots couldn’t use the technique to create an army

Pygmy marmosets: The newly discovered fossil monkey may have been around this size.

Fossil Micro-monkey the Size of a Hamster Discovered in Amazon Rain Forest

Peewee primate, classified by one single tooth the size of two pinheads, doesn’t seem to have been a gummivore like today’s South American micro-monkeys

The Chutzpah That Made Dr. Ruth the Real Wonder Woman

Legendary sex therapist Ruth Westheimer tells Haaretz – in Hebrew – about the limits of the #MeToo movement, Judaism's contribution to sex theory, and the documentary about her that's now hitting Israel

Jules Bergman, the Jewish reporter who covered all of NASA’s manned space missions during his lifetime.

The Jewish Reporter Who Brought the 1969 Moon Landing Into America’s Living Rooms

Jules Bergman was the first network correspondent assigned to cover space full time, making him 'almost as much of a celebrity as the astronauts he covered'

We Sleep Like the Fishes and Have Done for 450 Million Years

Zebrafish turn out to have the same deep sleep and dream patterns as reptiles — and ourselves

Dentist attends to a patient at his clinic in Managua, Nicaragua, March 27, 2019.

Tel Aviv Scientists Could Make Root Canals History

New nano-filling prevents the secondary tooth decay that takes place beneath cavities; could reach trial stage in a year or two

An artist’s rendering of Oumuamua. “It waited in place, like a buoy in the ocean, until the ‘ship’ of the solar system ran into it.”

Mystery Object That Entered Our Solar System Isn't an Alien, Scientists Say

International team of researchers still uncertain how to classify the cigar-shaped object called Oumuamua that was spotted in 2017

Jotus karllagerfeldi and Karl Lagerfeld.

There's a Spider on the Catwalk: New Arachnid Species Named for Fashion Icon Karl Lagerfeld

The frisky arachnid and deceased designer shared a subdued color scheme in black and white, the scientists explain

Image made available by NASA in 2015 shows dark streaks on Mars inferred to have been formed by contemporary flowing water.

Mars-quakes May Be Caused by Auto-fracking, Scientists Suggest

ISS meanwhile comes clean about mold problem, inadvertently resurrecting the eternal question: Is there life on Mars? Maybe, but maybe we put it there