Science

China runs the largest censorship machine in human history, researchers say. But Harvard studies of Internet postings in China suggest that even vitriolic criticisms of leaders and state policies are not what officials want to censor.

The bacteria that live in humans' guts influence weight gain and health. By studying twins in Malawi, scientists have found that changes in this microbial community may also turn malnutrition into a fatal condition.

Risking and embracing failure is part of the job for explorers and adventurers like aeronaut Salomon August Andrée. His fatal attempt at reaching the North Pole motivated others to push their own limits. The September issue of National Geographic investigates "famous failures" and why they mattered.

Cranes are elegant and endangered. For four decades, the International Crane Foundation has focused on their conservation. NPR's Jacki Lyden talks to one of the organization's co-founders, George Archibald, about a life spent researching his feathered friends all around the world.

Even infants too young to discern the meaning of words seem better able to learn while listening to the sound of human speech than while listening to nonsense — speech run backward. Little surprise there, perhaps, but a study shows that recordings of lemur calls spark learning, too.

About 160 years ago, before Europe began warming up, glaciers in the Alps started rapidly retreating. Now NASA scientists offer a possible explanation for this apparent paradox: Soot from the Industrial Revolution could have heated up the ice.

Age-related fumbles of memory are often feared as early signs of Alzheimer's dementia, but recent research confirms an important difference. The underlying biology of the two sorts of memory loss aren't the same. And the age-related form may be reversible someday.

A decade ago, cranes that had never before migrated followed the lead of an ultralight plane to learn the route south. Several generations later, old cranes are teaching young birds to navigate that same route. It's a clue that migration is a combination of nature and nurture, researchers say.

The Earth's average annual temperature has been rising for decades, but not in the last 15 years — colder winters and hotter summers notwithstanding. Now scientists offer evidence that this "pause" in average warming is because a cooler Pacific is temporarily taking up more heat than usual.

The doyenne of TV chefs imparted much wisdom to American cooks, but one piece of Child's advice you should ignore is to wash your raw poultry before cooking. It spreads germs. Everywhere. Yet studies suggest 90 percent of Americans do it, so food safety researchers are launching a campaign to squash the habit.