All Stories
- Life
Mammal size maxed out after dinos’ demise
Opening new ecological niches led to a worldwide boom in size, up to a point.
- Health & Medicine
A few stray hairs
Brain regions that sense the world can also flick a whisker, research in mice shows, suggesting that the organ’s division of labor is not so clear-cut.
- Earth
Shuttle images reveal Egypt’s lost great lake
Radar studies of desert drainage patterns point to ancient oases in the Sahara.
- Earth
Lakes are warming across the globe
Throughout the past quarter-century, inland lakes have been experiencing a small, steadily rising nighttime fever. Globally, the average increase has hovered around 0.045 degrees Celsius per year, but in some regions the increase has been more than twice that — or about 1 °C per decade.
- Space
How to use a pulsar to find Starbucks
Using stars as celestial beacons could be a backup if GPS ground stations failed.
- Physics
Negative temperature, infinitely hot
Physicists propose using ultracold atoms to create a thermodynamics puzzle routinely in the laboratory.
- Life
Big reveals for genome of tiny animal
Tunicates’ scrambled gene order suggests that arrangement may not matter for vertebrate body plan and hints at the origins of mysterious DNA chunks called introns.
- Health & Medicine
Antiretroviral drugs may prevent HIV infection
Gay and bisexual men who don’t have the AIDS virus can reduce their risk of getting it by taking a drug combination, a new study finds.
- Tech
Newfound water risk: Lead-leaching valves
Hidden elements in drinking-water lines can shed large amounts of lead, a toxic heavy metal. And it's quite legal, even if it does skirt the intent of federal regulations.
- Humans
Visor might protect troops from blasts
Computer simulations show that the current military helmet lets explosive forces into the head through the face.
- Animals
Island orangs descend from small group
Bornean apes went through a genetic bottleneck when isolated during an ancient glaciation.
- Humans
Wine-trashing microbe identified
In finding the source of the off-tasting molecule MDMP, researchers hope to point the way to eliminating it.
