Skip to content
1932
Photograph of corn stalks growing in a field. The earth is dry and cracked.
Food & Environment

Can desalination quench agriculture’s thirst?

By Lela Nargi

Miles away from the ocean, projects are afoot to clean up salty groundwater and use it to grow crops. Some say it’s a costly pipe dream, others say it’s part of the future.

Colorful visualizations of Calabi Yau surfaces suggest many possible geometries, represented as a variety of intricately twisted and folded shapes.
Physical World

String theory is not dead

By Tom Siegfried

Out of the limelight, theoretical physicists seek the math that can explain the universe’s particles and forces

Illustration shows plants with eggs where flowers should be. In center are two chickens with red slash through them. Background shows faint outline of proteins.
Technology

Cracking the recipe for perfect plant-based eggs

By Bob Holmes

Hint: It involves finding just the right proteins. With new ingredients and processes, the next generation of substitutes will be not just more egg-like, but potentially more nutritious.

A brightly colored butterfly sits on a flower, feeding.
Living World

The secrets of butterfly migration, written in pollen

By Saugat Bolakhe

Trillions of insects move around the globe each year. Scientists are working on new ways to map those long-distance journeys.

Photograph of a female earwig carefully grooming a cluster of pale eggs.
Living World

She ain’t scary, she’s my mother

By Tim Vernimmen

Elaborate courtship, devoted parenthood, gregarious nature (and occasional cannibalism) — earwigs have a lot going for them

A black and yellow frog clambers over sphagnum moss.
Living World

Frogs kick back against lethal fungus

Scientists are seeing signs of resistance to the infections that have been wiping out the world’s amphibian populations — and developing strategies to aid in the fight Down Under

By Martin J. Kernan
People doing different things in a crowd: walking, standing and talking, rushing, carrying things, pushing strollers, walking dogs.
Physical World

Bustling through the physics of crowds

COMIC: Using tools from fields like fluid dynamics to better understand how groups of people move around can improve flow and make large gatherings safer

By Matthew R. Francis   Illustrated by Maki Naro
Photograph of a small child sitting in a waiting-room chair with fists covering their face.
Health & Disease

Severe irritability in children and teens: A new understanding

By Katarina Zimmer

Kids with disruptive mood dysregulation disorder have explosive outbursts well past toddler age. Scientists are trying to work out the causes and what treatments help.

Photograph of a dead house fly infected with Entomophthora muscae with elevated wings and a black and white striped appearance to its abdomen. It has dark, ruby-red eyes and is placed on a flat surface and photographed on a dark background.
Living World

Night of the zombie insects

By Rohini Subrahmanyam

A parasitic fungus takes over the brains of flies and controls them for its own sinister ends. Here’s the science behind the horror.

Conceptual illustration of a ribosome with mRNA running through as it strings together amino acids to create a new protein.
Living World

When ribosomes go rogue

By Tim Vernimmen

Unusual variations in the cellular protein factory can skew development, help cancer spread and more. But ribosome variety may also play biological roles, scientists say.

Illustration of a woman reading to two children. There is an image of a cat in the book she is reading, and the girl says “Cat!”, while the boy says “¡Gato!”
Society

How a child becomes bilingual — and what can be done to help them get there

By Katarina Zimmer

Kids from immigrant backgrounds in the US often struggle to develop fluency in two languages. Many factors — parental misconceptions, the lack of support in schools and social attitudes — play a role.

A man rides a reclined bike race around a track
Technology

The Cybathlon: Bionic athletes compete for the gold — and push assistive technologies forward

By Dana Mackenzie

In the international competition, people with physical disabilities put state-of-the-art devices to the test as they race to complete the tasks of everyday life

Multimedia

Silhouette of a person pinching their forehead in pain.
Health & Disease

Studies of migraine’s many triggers offer paths to new therapies

By Amber Dance

One class of drugs has already found success in treating the painful, disorienting and common attacks. Excitement is building about a slew of additional drug targets.

Conceptual illustration shows lab-coated scientists attempting to kick a field goal but missing by many yards.
Health & Disease

Why a diabetes drug fell short of anticancer hopes

By Amber Dance

Population and animal studies suggested it could treat cancer, but the clinical trials were a bust. Here’s what happened and what potential may remain.

A collage of photos shows five high-rise buildings made of mass timber.
Technology

Sustainable building effort reaches new heights with wooden skyscrapers

By Kurt Kleiner

Wood engineered for strength and safety offers architects an alternative to carbon-intensive steel and concrete

A European robin feeds a much larger common cuckoo in a nest.
Living World

Are you my baby? The clever ways that brood parasites trick other birds

By Sofia Quaglia

Cuckoos, cowbirds and other species outsource their parental duties. Scientists are uncovering new twists in this sneaky — and often treacherous — game of survival.

An artist’s conception of an “awkward family photo” featuring multicellular animals and their unicellular cousins.
Living World

We are family: Tracing the evolution of animals

By Amber Dance

To understand the origins of multicelled life, researchers are studying a motley assortment of simpler animal relatives. The commonalities they’re unearthing offer a trove of clues about our mutual past.

A colorful hummingbird hovers at a flower, feeding with a long beak.
Living World

Hummingbirds thrive on an extreme lifestyle. Here’s how.

Soldiering through nightly suspended animation, a (nearly) all-sugar diet, backwards flight and long migrations, the birds’ tiny physiques prove mighty

By Bob Holmes
A computer drawing in which a white blood cell spits its stringy DNA at a virus.
Living World

Your cells are dying. All the time.

Some go gently into the night. Others die less prettily in freak accidents or deadly invasions, or after a showy display.

By Amber Dance
Illustration of two kidneys, ureters and some major blood vessels, with some yellow blobs depicting a drug.
Health & Disease

Targeting the racial disparity in kidney disease

By Liam Drew

Some people of West African descent face a higher risk of renal failure. New drugs based on gene research may help right the ship — if they can reach everyone who needs them.

Hands type at a computer with bar graphs on screen, other hands hold questionnaires.
Society

Can you believe the polls? It depends

By Ula Chrobak

A veteran of survey research explains why high-quality polling matters — and warns of the proliferation of shoddy gimmicks

Collage with images of hospital, bacteria, viruses, patient and health-care worker.
Health & Disease

What if a virus could reverse antibiotic resistance?

By Patience Asanga

In promising experiments, phage therapy forces bacteria into a no-win dilemma that lowers their defenses against drugs they’d evolved to withstand

Cartoon illustration shows four people sniffing strong-smelling items: an old sock, flowers, a banana and a cake.
The Mind

What’s that smell — and how’d you know?

By Daniela Hirschfeld

It’s clear that genes, receptors and neurons all play a role in detecting odors. But much of how we make sense of what we sniff remains mysterious. A neuroscientist explains.

Collage shows DNA, chromosomes, histones, a few key chemicals.
Living World

These proteins have been secretly managing your cells

By Viviane Callier

Scientists have long known that histones spool DNA and help regulate genes. They may be doing a lot more.

A closeup view of a bit of soil forming an arch.
Food & Environment

The dirt on biocrusts: Why scientists are working to save Earth’s living skin

Think twice before stepping on that crunchy top layer of soil. It may be a vital ecosystem — one that you can help protect.

By Jude Coleman
Photograph of a warning label on the side of a cigarette pack. It says SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy.
Health & Disease

The tussle over cigarette warning labels, and the hazy future of vaping

Regulatory hurdles, industry objections and legal fights have gone on for decades over traditional tobacco. What’s in store for the next generation of smoking?

By Clare Watson

Support Knowable Magazine

Help us make scientific knowledge accessible to all

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error