Advances

Are you a specialist or a generalist? The answer could reveal something about how well you learn and perfect a skill

Bones of now extinct species became a haven for bee babies thousands of years ago, scientists report in a first-of-its-kind discovery

Sort out a rectangle tangle in this math puzzle

Making fire on demand was a milestone in the lives of our early ancestors. But the question of when that skill first arose has been difficult for scientists to pin down

Cross-species “defense pacts” help animals keep tabs on parasites and predators

These miniature displays can be the size of your pupil, with as many pixels as you have photoreceptors—opening the way to improved virtual reality

A new sound-based system could squelch small fires before they grow into home-destroying blazes

It was thought that complex cells couldn’t survive above a certain temperature, but a tiny amoeba has proven that assumption wrong

Fiber optics that connect the world can detect its earthquakes, too

Scientists found evidence of a distant planet’s moon system forming

Two new studies dig into the long, curving path that cats took toward domestication

An enigmatic group of fossil organisms has finally been identified—and is changing the story of how plants took root on land