STAYING IN SYNC Some ensembles are more autocratic — following one leader — while other musical groups are more democratic, making corrections equally, to stay together while playing a piece.
EmirMemedovski/iStockphoto
BEE TRACKING A new website, bumblebeewatch.org, lets you track sightings of bumblebees and is part of a larger effort to protect the insects.
© Christy Stewart
YAWN BONDS Chimps catch yawns not only from members of their group but from familiar and unfamiliar people, a new study finds. Researchers suggest that the apes employ this form of empathic behavior with humanlike flexibility.
M. Campbell and F. de Waal 2014/Yerkes National Primate Research Center/Emory Univ.
DUST BUSTER In the Orion Nebula, some dusty disks surrounding young stars, as seen in this artist’s rendition, survive despite their proximity to Theta1 Orionis C, the bright star shining in the background. Stars closer to the massive star have lost most of their dust.
C.R. O'Dell and S.K. Wong/Rice Univ., NASA
PING ME The skull of the 28-million-year-old Cotylocara macei suggests that this early toothed whale used echolocation.
James Carew and Mitchell Colgan
Science News
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Slight boost for U.S. climate research funding
While most science funding remains flat lined in President Obama’s 2015 budget, climate change research gets an increase.
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World’s thinnest material stretches, bends, twists
Graphene, the thinnest known material at one carbon atom thick, can be manipulated under the microscope using tricks from a variety of paper-cutting origami called kirigami.
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Osmotroph
An organism that eats by osmosis, relying on nutrients diffusing into its body from a higher concentration in its environment.
Feature
The addiction paradox
Addiction is often seen as a chronic disease that requires maintenance treatment even after years of sobriety. But even without help, most addicts eventually can quit for good.
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Mature galaxies found in young universe
Inactive galaxies the size of the Milky Way found dating to when the universe was just 1.5 billion years old.
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Cloudy forecast
Over decades climatologists have grown more confident in their projections of the future impact of greenhouse gas emissions. But whether shifts in cloudiness will amplify global warming continues to vex researchers.
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Roman gladiator school digitally rebuilt
Imaging techniques unveil a 1,900-year-old Roman gladiators’ training center that’s buried beneath a site in Austria.
Science Visualized
Second wave of bird flu ups pandemic worries
The H7N9 avian influenza virus, which first appeared in 2013, is sweeping China with a second, larger wave of illness.
News in Brief
Milk protein a potential flame retardant
Protein found in milk offers a nontoxic way to extinguish fabric fires.
It's Alive
Pelican spiders: slow, safe assassins
Spiders, thank goodness, haven’t evolved assassin drones. But the specialized hunters of the family Archaeidae can kill at a distance.
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Experimental drug might get the salt out
Tests in people and rats show sodium levels in blood drop as drug candidate limits the body’s salt absorption.
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The Monkey's Voyage
By 26 million years ago, the ancestors of today’s New World monkeys had arrived in South America. How those primates reached the continent is something of a conundrum.
News in Brief
Pianists learn better by playing
Pianists’ muscle memory helped them recognize incorrect notes.
50 Years Ago
Cell visible by own light
Scientists can now “see” a single living cell made visible by its own light. A new image intensifier, which amplifies the very faint light of an individual cell in a way somewhat like the television screen makes its bright picture, has been developed. It can be made to amplify light as much as a million and a half times….
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Acid-bath method for making stem cells under fire
No one has been able to reproduce a new technique for creating stem cells called STAP cells, leading some researchers to call for the retraction of the original research papers.
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