All Stories
- Earth
Earth knocked for a loop
Chile’s February 27 temblor, tectonically linked to another giant quake 50 years ago, sped up the Earth’s rotation and tipped the planet’s axis.
- Chemistry
Plasticizers kept from leaching out
‘Chemicals of concern’ may be made safer in new materials.
- Space
Lopsided stellar disks help black holes guzzle gas
Theorists have found a new recipe for feeding the supermassive centers of galaxies.
- Agriculture
Frogs: Clues to how weed killer may feminize males
Atrazine, a widely used agricultural herbicide, not only can alter hormone levels in the developing frogs, but also perturb their physical development — and lead to an excess number of females, researchers report. Their new findings may help explain observations reported by a number of other research groups that at least in frogs, fairly low concentrations of atrazine can induce a feminization — or demasculinization.
- Life
Rise of female weaponry driven by poop fights
Motherly fights for excrement in one species of dung beetle have favored the evolution of a special female horn.
- Health & Medicine
Coffee not linked to heart arrhythmia
A large survey of insured people finds no extra hospitalizations in java swillers.
- Paleontology
Ancient DNA suggests polar bears evolved recently
A study of a rare Norwegian fossil narrows down when polar bears evolved and finds they are closely related to modern-day brown bears in Alaska.
- Archaeology
Stone Age engraving traditions appear on ostrich eggshells
Fragments indicate symbolic communication on 60,000-year-old water containers.
- Humans
Titanic study: It takes time to do the right thing
Comparing the Titanic and Lusitania disasters suggests that people in a crisis are more likely to maintain social norms if they have longer to react.
- Earth
Frogs: Weed killer creates real Mr. Moms
Several months back, a Berkeley undergraduate began witnessing distinctly odd behavior in frogs she was caring for in the lab. At about 18-months old, some frisky guys began regularly mounting tank mates, as if to copulate. Except that their chosen partner was invariably male. He had to be. Because genetically, every animal in the tank was male.
- Health & Medicine
Hormone may be heart-healthy insulin substitute
A study in mice finds leptin lowers blood sugar without raising cholesterol.
- Climate
IPCC looks to vet, report climate-science better
Major U.S. science organizations aren’t the only ones to realize that the climate-science community has bungled – and badly – its portrayals of research on global change in recent months, if not years, and its responses to criticisms. Yesterday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (a group established by the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization) said: “we recognize the criticism that has been leveled at us and the need to respond.” So will be convening an “independent review” panel to investigate what the organization’s procedures should be to vet not only the data it uses and how to synthesize conclusions based on those data, but also how it should convey those conclusions (and any necessary caveats) in reports to the public and policymakers.
