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May 19, 2026
Birds clap in the dark to flirt
In northern Argentina, one bird courts romance by snapping its wrists together, producing a sound scientists have puzzled over for decades. Now, researchers have captured the behavior in detail, revealing how scissor-tailed nightjars create one of the most curious sounds in the avian world.
May 11, 2026
Astronomers produce most detailed map of the cosmic web
International study used data from the James Webb Space Telescope
May 11, 2026
New method sharpens the search for alien biology
New UCR research shows that the search for life beyond Earth could benefit from a statistical approach that prioritizes patterns rather than searching for individual chemical or molecular traces.
May 08, 2026
The National Science Board purge, explained
Amidst the many attention-grabbing headlines of 2026, there is a recent one that may have flown under the radar but shouldn’t have. On April 24, the White House dismissed the entire 22-person board that oversees the National Science Foundation. The NSF is an independent federal agency that supports science and engineering in all 50 states and U.S. territories.