Stories by Joanna Thompson

In case you missed it

There’s a structural reason your sponge hosts so many microbes

A new algorithm writes wine and beer reviews that sound like they were penned by human critics. Is that a good thing?

A research team finds seven tiny dwarf galaxies stripped of their dark matter that nonetheless persisted despite the theft.

Photographer Sebastião Salgado has spent more than two decades documenting the complex lives of Indigenous Amazonian people as they stand strong in the face of unrelenting colonial forces

Weird dental scratches in humans can indicate tool use, but in some macaques, they mean something entirely different

A new machine called BirdBot balances walking efficiency and speed

His groundbreaking work combined the mathematical field of topology with string theory

A new method for monitoring proteins could lead to better drug development

In case you missed it

A pandemic micrography project

Researchers say that such bio-integrated systems could be the future of prosthetics

Life onboard the ISS goes on in the wake of Russia’s attack against Ukraine, even as the space project faces an uncertain future

New research leverages old physics to turn ice pucks into hovercraft

Scientists say that the new material is even more durable than real dental enamel

The Omicron variant appears to be creating more cases in small children

Experts predict that such nonhuman-to-human “xenotransplants” may become a viable option within the next decade

These stunning patterns have an unlikely designer

A new magnetic material, just one atom thick, can manipulate electrons’ spin for next-generation data storage

Advances in laser-receiver technology could deliver high-quality, reliable communications for future space exploration, such as sending humans to Mars