Analyze This!
Exploring science through data, graphs, visualizations and more.
- Chemistry
New materials yank ‘forever chemicals’ from water
Materials known as metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, trap some PFAS fast — and can be reused again and again.
- Animals
Analyze This: Some bats feast on songbirds midflight
Sensor data reveal greater noctule bats chasing, catching and chewing on birds during nighttime hunts.
- Space
Analyze This: Ice around baby stars may hint at origins of Earth’s water
Scientists have now gotten a good look at the ice around a baby star. It might help them unravel the origins of the water needed for life on Earth.
- Animals
Birds of paradise have a newly discovered glow
Many male birds of paradise have bellies, bills and other parts that glow under certain types of light. This special gleam may help them woo mates.
- Science & Society
Analyze This: Do bad childhoods make movie villains?
In DC and Marvel movies, a rough childhood doesn’t always mean that characters become villains.
- Animals
Analyze This: Moving frogs to new places helped an endangered species spread
Frogs resistant to a deadly fungus jump-started populations in these new areas.
- Animals
Analyze This: Why the fastest creatures are neither tiny or huge
The “Goldilocks zone” for fast animal speed seems to depend on a body not being too small or so big it gets in the way of its own strength.
- Earth
Analyze This: Smartphone data may help improve GPS
Data from millions of phones helped fill in maps of the ionosphere, an atmospheric layer that can muddle radio signals key for navigation systems.
- Animals
Analyze This: When do cats move like liquids?
Cats flow through narrow openings but hesitate before short openings. That may help them avoid unseen danger in the wild.
- Ecosystems
Analyze This: In movies, wetlands often get a bad rap
Swamps in films are often linked to danger, death and strange things. But movies also highlight wetlands’ biodiversity and resources.
- Psychology
Analyze This: Skipping through videos may increase boredom
Contrary to what people often expect, fast-forwarding or switching videos may leave viewers more bored and less satisfied.
- Fossils
Analyze This: How big was the biggest T. rex?
Only around 80 fossil Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons have been found. They probably don’t include the biggest T. rex that ever lived.
