All Stories
- Life
Grasshoppers’ terror outlives them
After an existence plagued by predatory spiders, the insects pass into oblivion, leaving a legacy of impoverished soil.
- Life
Calcium offers clues in mass extinction
Ocean acidification during Permian period may have caused the Great Dying.
- Health & Medicine
Diet sodas may confuse brain’s ‘calorie counter’
Among regular consumers of sugar-free soft drinks, networks that equate sweet flavors with energy intake may grow numb to the real stuff.
- Earth
Ancient volcanoes destroyed ozone
Prehistoric eruptions gave off huge amounts of a gas that erodes the UV-blocking atmospheric layer.
- Health & Medicine
Fish oil components may not benefit everyone’s heart
A six-year study finds that omega-3 fatty acids don't lower heart risk in people with diabetes.
- Life
You have grandpa’s chromosome tips
Older fathers pass more gene-protecting DNA to their paternal grandkids.
- Physics
The electric flour voltage test
Granular materials give off a zap just before slipping, a finding with potential implications for sensing the starts of silo disasters or earthquakes.
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- Life
Invasive mite worsens honeybee viruses
Once-obscure deformed wing virus swept to prominence in honeybee colonies in Hawaiian islands as invasive pest arrived.
- Life
Microbes flourish under Arctic sea ice
Oceanographic expedition surprised to find photosynthetic microorganisms thriving under frozen surface.
- Tech
Court ‘shares’ researchers’ e-mails, intellectual property
“A situation has arisen involving scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) that should concern all those who value the principles of academic freedom and responsibility,” warns top WHOI officials. They were responding to a court order requiring that two WHOI scientists turn over 3,500 emails and other documents to BP. Included in the information was intellectual property that outsiders could exploit.
- Space
Some newfound planets are something else
A re-evaluation of the Kepler mission’s data suggests one in three hot giant orbs it discovered is actually another kind of object.
