Researchers study how folds and other creases disappear. (p. 12)

A mathematical analysis shows that random factors underlie the insects’ movements across the landscape.

In the pantheon of cosmic celebrities, the sun is one true superstar. It’s not only the Earth’s prime source of light and heat — it also fuels the greenery that makes breathing possible, keeps time by setting the body’s daily rhythms and spits out charged particles that create the beauty of the aurora borealis.But for all its roles on life’s stage, the sun remains something of an inscrutable star. You might say it’s the Tiger Woods of the cosmos.Behind its blazing facade, the sun turns out to be reluctant to give up its secrets. Most frustratingly, astronomers haven’t figured out... (p. 18)

Physicists find a more efficient way to store quantum information in a crystal, a step towards super-secure quantum communications. (p. 16)

Oceanographers track a newly formed eddy in the Gulf of Mexico and where it might carry oil.

Hayabusa is  the little spacecraft that could. Having survived countless technical challenges over its seven-year journey, the Japanese probe returned to Earth on June 13, disintegrating as planned in a blazing fireball over Australia’s nighttime skies. But before it burned up in the atmosphere, Hayabusa released its precious cargo: a 40-centimeter-wide capsule that, scientists hope, contains samples of the asteroid the probe visited in 2005. Protected in a larger container, the capsule parachuted down to the Woomera military installation in South Australia, where ground tea...

Marine predators cruise the seas using fractal principles. (p. 15)

Earth’s northern polar cap is disappearing at unprecedented rates. To understand why, re­searchers are getting up close and personal with ice.Using satellites, scientists get a broad perspective on how the skin of sea ice atop the Arctic Ocean shrinks, on average, just a little bit more every summer. But zooming down to within a few meters of the surface brings some important little things into view. In particular, “microphysical” properties of the ice, such as how salty water percolates through it, turn out to play a surprising role in ice behavior.Yet most models of melting don’t in... (p. 22)

As nuclear physics vacation spots go, the “island of stability” sounds pretty good. But this island isn’t in the Caribbean, the Maldives or even Hawaii. It’s at the edge of the periodic table of the elements.Reaching the island would be the culmination of decades of synthesizing artificial elements, those heavier than uranium (SN: 4/15/78, p. 236). By smashing smaller elements together, researchers have shoved more and more protons and neutrons into a single atomic nucleus. Jam-packed products that include more than 110 to 112 or so protons in each nucleus are generally called “super... (p. 26)