All Stories
- Psychology
Mental disorders don’t hinder headache treatment
Headache patients may benefit from drug treatment even if they also suffer from depression or anxiety.
- Computing
Quantum computers could tackle enormous linear equations
New work suggests that the envisioned systems would be powerful enough to quickly process even trillions of variables.
- Climate
Carbon emissions: Trend improves, but …
Sometimes what’s bad for the economy can be good for the planet. Or so argued Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, yesterday. This environmental trend spotter pointed to several developments that may have escaped our attention as the global economy alternately sputtered and entered periods of freefall throughout the past 18 months. Trend one: U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, have taken a tumble.
- Life
Golgi’s job stretches it thin
Researchers have pinpointed the protein that gives a cell’s control room its shape and also keeps it functioning.
- Space
Solar system’s edge surprises astronomers
New observations reveal a dense ribbon structure that current models don't explain.
- Chemistry
Tongue’s sour-sensing cells taste carbonation
A protein splits carbon dioxide to give fizz its unique flavor.
- Health & Medicine
Brain speed-reads using just one part
Scientists measure the speed of recognizing, manipulating and producing speech in human brains.
- Anthropology
Pygmies’ short stature linked to high death rates
Island-dwelling pygmies provide contested evidence that body size shrinks as mortality rates climb.
- Life
Fly pheromones can say yes and no
A new study begins to decode pheromone messages and finds that the same chemicals that attract can also maintain the species barrier.
- Climate
Giant snakes warming to U.S. climes
Some were pets whose bodies and appetites apparently got too big for their owners to support. Most are probably descendants of released pets. Today, thousands of really big non-native snakes — we’re talking boa constrictors, anacondas and pythons — slither wild in southern Florida. And there’s nothing holding them in the Sunshine State. Which is why a report that was released today contends they pose moderate to high ecological threats to states on three U.S. coasts. Indeed, the homelands of these snakes share climatic features with large portions of the United States — territory currently inhabited by some 120 million Americans. Based on comparisons of the temperatures, rainfall and land cover found in the snakes’ native range, it’s possible that these slithering behemoths could stake claims to territory as far north as coastal Delaware and Oregon.
- Ecosystems
Windy with a chance of weevils
Scientists have traced the reappearance of cotton pests in west-central Texas to a tropical storm.
- Earth
Darwinopterus points to chunky evolution
A newly discovered pterosaur had the legs of its ancestors and the head of its descendants.
