An incense burner from a century tested positive for a chemical that’s released when THC is burned.

Urban infants who spend their first year of life around microbes like those found on farms are less likely to develop asthma.

Wolves lack the facial muscles required to raise their eyebrows—a feature that makes dogs especially endearing to people.

Around the world, aging and inadequate water systems are a huge public health problem. Now, researchers are using artificial intelligence to help conserve and monitor the quality of drinking water.

Accelerating ice melt in the Himalayas may imperil up to a billion people in South Asia who rely on glacier runoff for drinking water and more.

Altruism is alive and well. So is the desire to protect one’s self-image.

A new study suggests a half-ton bird roamed Europe nearly 2 million years ago, around when our Homo predecessors were first entering the region.

A new study reveals that some European Neanderthals might have displaced their relatives in Siberia, while others mingled with another, still mysterious, ancient human population.

Octopuses “think” with neurons so distributed throughout their bodies that sometimes the left hand literally doesn’t know what the…left hand is doing.

In Côte d’Ivoire, employees at Fairtrade-certified cocoa cooperatives have higher salaries and better working conditions than those at non-certified organizations. Farm laborers, on the other hand, don’t fare as well.

Two research teams went into the weeds to quantify the magic behind the flight of the dandelion seed.

Freezing soap bubbles look like snow globes. This whimsical effect could help us improve biological freezing techniques—and is incredibly fun to watch.

Good news for bugs that weigh less than a sesame seed.

How “change blindness” prevents you from seeing this 10 of clubs turn into an ace of spades.

A swine virus that appeared in the U.S. in 2013 has proven hard to track. But an algorithm might help researchers predict the next outbreak.

A new analysis of a skull found in Greece decades ago suggests that early humans may have been in Eurasia as early as 210,000 years ago.

A chicken-sized raptor relative adds credence to the idea that flight evolved multiple times among ground-faring dinosaurs.

Quantum physics impacts the technology students use every day. Use these resources from NOVA broadcasts, NOVA Digital, and What the Physics!? to introduce quantum concepts to your classroom.

Girls are great at math. But if they’re even better at reading, they might be more motivated to choose a humanities-focused career.

Researchers are developing robots that use AI to read emotions and social cues, making them better at interacting with humans. Are they a solution to labor shortages in fields like health care and education, a threat to human workers, or both?

A new fossil find may help pinpoint the origins of mammals’ uber-flexible hyoid bone, which anchors the tongue and gives us our signature swallowing style.

The new material could have applications in robotics and medicine.

Killing red tide cells en masse can unleash their potent toxin. That means researchers need to get creative.

Even while still in their eggs, baby birds can hear their parents’ alarm calls. They then pass the message along to unhatched siblings so the entire clutch emerges aware of the dangers ahead.

A new analysis pinpoints some of the most ancient stars in our galaxy—and tells the story of the Milky Way’s ravenous past.

A sobering analysis suggests that animal species aren’t adapting fast enough to maintain their numbers in the face of rising temperatures.

PBS leads the list with 47 nominations.

Researchers have built a prosthesis that enabled a man who lost his hand to text, pluck grapes from their stems, and stuff a pillow into its case.

The border collie achieved international fame for her remarkable grasp on vocabulary and sentence structure.

Using data from an especially bright population of stars, astronomers have reconstructed the Milky Way’s peaks and valleys like never before.

An AI chip designed to mimic certain aspects of the human brain has given a bicycle an unprecedented level of autonomy.

These two genes are all it takes to determine the sex of a kiwifruit.

With a goal to empower youth to tell stories about the world in new ways, NOVA Science Studio was able to give students exposure to a wide range of careers in STEM, journalism, and media production.

Researchers are using fluid dynamics to try to improve the study of crime scene blood spatter.

The burnt ruins of a Maya city in what’s now Guatemala hold clues to its untimely demise at the turn of the 7th century.

Two kinds of glow-in-the-dark catsharks convert blue light to green, and now we know how.

A rare iron isotope produced by exploding stars has been found in Antarctic snow.

Both treatments rely on infusing patients with antibodies that latch onto the virus and block it from invading cells.

A computer simulation suggests that a massive collision may have caused Jupiter’s core to shatter into a gassy, borderless cloud.

Scientists studying diamonds from deep within Earth’s mantle found evidence of a reservoir of rocks and gas that may be nearly as old as the planet itself.

The LIGO and Virgo observatories appear to have picked up gravitational waves from a first-of-its-kind astronomical observation.

The threat of mercury in seafood was curbed with regulations, but climate change could drive levels back up.

The feces contain the oldest example of parasite DNA ever recorded.

Artifacts unearthed in Idaho challenge the idea that the first people to populate the Americas made the journey on foot around the end of the Ice Age.

The technology is still in its infancy, but could someday aid the development of faster, more energy-efficient electronics.

The feathery glint startles their rodent prey, making them easier to catch.

The breakthrough could mean that fewer organs go to waste before they make it into a transplant recipient.

That earns this fish, Electrophorus voltai, the title of the strongest known living source of electricity.

Scientists say the planet, called K2-18b, is “the best candidate for habitability” beyond our solar system.

The gargantuan structures hint at a massive explosion in our galaxy’s past.