All Stories
- Space
First it’s there, then it’s knot
Discovered just a year ago, a tangle of atoms at the edge of the solar system disappears before astrophysicists’ eyes, leaving questions behind.
- Health & Medicine
Pernicious influences on dietary choices
Because humanity developed during eons of cyclical feasts and famines, we survived by chowing down on energy-dense foods whenever they became available. Today that's all the time. But a number of recent studies point to additional, less obvious influences on what and how much we choose to eat.
- Life
New genetic blueprint for bloodsuckers
Mosquito genome number three could lead to new pesticides to fight the adaptable pests.
- Humans
Ancient New Guinea settlers headed for the hills
Humans had reached the rugged land by sea and quickly adapted to the mile-high forested interior by nearly 50,000 years ago, stone tools and plant remains indicate.
- Health & Medicine
Few Americans eat right
The Institute of Medicine periodically issues recommendations on what people should eat to be healthy and maintain a reasonable weight. Americans have largely ignored this well-intentioned advice, a new study shows. It reports that “nearly the entire U.S. population consumes a diet that is not on par with recommendations.”
- Space
Distant world could support life
For the first time, astronomers detect a planet beyond the solar system with the potential to be habitable.
- Animals
Monkey in the mirror
Monkeys with implanted head devices use mirrors to inspect themselves, perhaps signaling self-awareness.
- Life
A thousand points of height
A study finds heaps of genetic variants that influence a person’s stature, but even added together they don’t stack up to much.
- Physics
Glacier found to be deeply cracked
A new study finds deep fissures in Alaska ice that could affect future responses to melting.
- Earth
Contemplating an Arctic oil spill
The waters off northern Alaska may be “the largest oil province in the United States” after the Gulf, notes Edward Itta, a native of Barrow, Alaska. He is also mayor of the North Slope Borough, an 88,000-square-mile jurisdiction that runs across the upper part of the state. And in a September 27 videoconference with the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, he tried to impress upon the commissioners just how remote his neck of the tundra is.
- Life
A salty tail
Just adding sodium can stimulate limb regrowth in tadpoles, a study finds, raising the possibility that human tissue might respond to relatively simple treatment.
- Health & Medicine
How the brain chooses sides
A new study reveals where and how people decide which hand to use for a simple task.
