Here's a really fascinating example of the interconnectedness of life and the importance of viewing things as systems, rather than individual events. The Bahamas are, underwater, giant mounds of calcium… Read the rest of the article: The existence of the Bahamas begins in the Sahara desert

I'm about to start a year-long fellowship at Harvard, immersing myself in geeky science awesomeness, and you can follow along with my newsletter The Fellowship of Three Things.

Photographer Lucian Perkins documented the thousands of Virginians who camped out in cars and waited in the rain earlier this month to get access to basic dental, vision, and medical… Read the rest of the article: Heartbreaking photos of uninsured Americans waiting for care

Two doctors are pushing for the FDA to add information to drug packaging that explains how the medication compares to placebo.

Dr. Sheik Umar Khan, a hero who has treated hundreds of people in the recent deadly outbreak, is in a Doctors Without Borders isolation ward after working at a hospital… Read the rest of the article: The top Ebola doctor in Sierra Leone has contracted Ebola

We have lots of new information about Mars, writes Alexandra Witze at Nature, but scientists are still struggling with what that information means and how all the parts work together.

An execution in Arizona turned torturous yesterday, with convicted murderer Joseph Wood taking almost two hours to die after he was injected with a secret mixture of drugs.

The Center for Biological Diversity has distributed hundreds of thousands of free condoms in endangered species-themed wrappers, with the message that more humans means more extinctions.

Remember that upper Midwest mayfly apocalypse that Xeni wrote about? Here's how those flies are born. The female dies while laying her eggs. The babies hatch within seconds.

In a story at National Geographic, bush firefighter Gabriel d'Eustachio describes multiple fires where the leading edge of flame was preceded by an invertebrate "wave of creepy-crawlies".

This is scientist Zack Jud, posing with a lionfish he caught in a estuary river in 2010 — four years before 6th grader Lauren Arrington, who is now being credited… Read the rest of the article: Sixth grader's internet-famous science project misleadingly promoted as "new"

Blogger Mikki Kendall is black, female, and receives a daily deluge of violent, threatening invective. When she temporarily "became" a white man, all that changed.

Is "brain eating" a metaphor or exaggeration of how the amoeba works? No, actually. It really does literally eat brains. Here's how.

From the Wellcome Image Collection, this is how you pumped your breasts 150 years ago. Via the fantastic Twitter feed of Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris.

Open science advocate Michael Nielson writes about how scientists can infer causation in situations where it's not possible to do a randomized controlled trial.

It holds a singular place in the American imagination today, but there was a lot of opposition to the Apollo program as it was happening.

It's not caused by erosion. Instead, the rock, itself, forms the arch and the erosion just washes away everything else around it.

Grist has an interview with activist and writer Paul Kingsnorth, a former environmentalist who has decided that the right way to deal with the end of the world is to… Read the rest of the article: Giving up on saving the world

In a rare complication of being a metalhead, a 50-year-old Motorhead fan developed a brain bleed after combining enthusiastic headbanging with a benign cyst.

Maggie Koerth-Baker on why the megafauna of George Lucas' parched desert world makes no sense. It's not the dry heat that's the problem; it's the food supply.