Ekemeni Riley is the managing director of Aligning Science Across Parkinson's, a research initiative that worked on an effort to bring a more diverse population into a study on genes that carry a greater risk for the disease. A team that included scientists from Lagos, London and the U.S. found a previously unknown gene variant that can nearly quadruple the risk for people of African ancestry. Anna Rose Layden for NPR hide caption
Clarence DeMar in 1932. Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection hide caption
Archaeologists dug into a riverbank in Zambia and uncovered what they call the earliest known wood construction by humans. The half-million year-old artifacts could change how we see Stone-Age people. Larry Barham and Geoff Duller/University of Liverpool hide caption
A diver in the Revillagigedo Archipelago interacts with giant mantas as part of a citizen science cruise led by Dr. Alfredo Giron. Alfredo Giron hide caption
Since its launch, the James Webb Space Telescope has sent back detailed images and spectra of galaxies from when the universe was just 900 million years old. NASA, ESA, CSA, Simon Lilly (ETH Zurich), Daichi Kashino (Nagoya University), Jorryt Matthee (ETH Zurich), Christina Eilers (MIT), Rongmon Bordoloi (NCSU), Ruari Mackenzie (ETH Zurich) hide caption
Researchers looking for root causes of long COVID work in the autopsy suite inside the Clinical Center at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption
Globally, there are more than 400 million UTIs a year. This illustration depicts the most common kind of UTI—bladder (blue) inflammation caused by E. coli (red). TUMEGGY/Getty Images/Science Photo Library hide caption
NASA reports July 2023 as the hottest month on record. David McNew/Getty Images/David McNew hide caption
Allergenic foods. Top left to right: shrimp (crustacean), soy, milk, peanuts. Bottom left to right: tree nuts, wheat, egg, fish. Science Photo Library/ Getty Images hide caption
Some people who take Ozempic and Wegovy report it tamps down their cravings for alcohol, and they're drinking less. lucentius/Getty Images hide caption
The Statue of Liberty is seen June 7 through a haze-filled sky from the Staten Island Ferry in New York. The smoke from Canadian wildfires that drifted into the U.S. led to a spike in people with asthma visiting emergency rooms — particularly in the New York area. Yuki Iwamura/AP hide caption
Journalists film the live telecast of spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 landing on the moon at ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network facility in Bengaluru, India, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. Aijaz Rahi/AP hide caption
Marine scientists Jan-Olaf Meynecke attaches video-enabled tracking tags to humpback whales near Brisbane, Australia. While collecting data for a larger project on the whales' migration patterns and climate change, Meynecke and his colleagues discovered a new behavior they call "sand rolling." Jan-Olaf Meynecke hide caption
After collecting data using LiDAR, researchers were able to visually strip away trees in a lab and reveal the ruins of Ocomtun. University of Houston hide caption
Damselfish didn't detect a threat when the two models of a trumpetfish and a parrotfish passed by together. Sam Matchette hide caption
A precisely timed pulse to a brain area just behind the ear can help reduce memory deficits in patients suffering moderate to severe traumatic brain injuries. Malte Mueller/Getty Images/fStop hide caption
A team of researchers recently reviewed studies on five of the most widely discussed happiness strategies—gratitude, being social, exercise, mindfulness/meditation and being in nature—to see if the findings held up to current scientific best practices. filo/Getty Images hide caption
Painting, Coalbrookdale by Night by Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, 1801. The work shows the so-called "Cort" process in use. Specifically, it depicts night work at the Bedlam furnaces in Madeley Dale (i.e. Coalbrookdale) along the river Severn, Shropshire. Courtesy of The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum hide caption
The remains of Catoctin Furnace in Maryland as seen in 2020. Researchers have now analyzed the DNA of enslaved and free Black workers there, connecting them to nearly 42,000 living relatives. Katherine Frey/The Washington Post via Getty Images hide caption
Scientists say they've found a special part of the brain that, when stimulated, can cause out-of-body experiences. Matthias Clamer/Getty Images hide caption