A world of self-improving machines has lived in fiction for more than a century. What gives that old fear new force now is ...

Computational biologist Brandon Ogbunu explores and writes about the intersection of science, society, and culture. We spoke ...

One hundred years ago, the small town of Dayton, Tenn., became the unlikely stage for one of the most sensational trials in American history. A local substitute teacher, John Scopes, was charged with ...

Imagine a photograph of your great-grandparents, grandparents and parents side by side. You’d see a resemblance, but each generation would look distinct from its predecessors. This is the process of ...

Researchers found that ancient hominids—including early humans—were exposed to lead throughout childhood, leaving chemical traces in fossil teeth. Experiments suggest this exposure may have driven ...

Snails on a tiny rocky islet evolved before scientists' eyes. The marine snails were reintroduced after a toxic algal bloom wiped them out from the skerry. While the researchers intentionally brought ...

A fish thought to be evolution’s time capsule just surprised scientists. A detailed dissection of the coelacanth — a 400-million-year-old species often called a “living fossil” — revealed that key ...