All Stories
- Math
The happiness virus
Two studies apply social networking ideas to data from health studies of thousands of people, and suggest different interpretations of how contagious happiness or other experiences can be.
- Archaeology
Tools with handles even more ancient
An analysis of stone tools excavated at a Syrian site indicates that, around 70,000 years ago, Neandertals used a tarlike adhesive to affix sharpened items to handles.
- Chemistry
Of Presidents and Nobels
It appears Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will soon have produced two Nobel laureates to offer White House counsel and directives on science policy.
- Health & Medicine
Stronger role for a breast cancer drug
Going beyond its original role as an add-on for chemotherapy, the breast cancer drug lapatinib, when taken with another kind of frontline drug, may find use for patients with the HER2-positive form of the cancer.
- Life
Study raises worries for zoo-born elephants
Study of captive-born females finds big survival gap between zoo natives and elephants in native ranges.
- Health & Medicine
Gene could drive species separation
Newly identified fruit fly gene provides evidence for “cheating genes” that may cause species schisms
- Earth
Reef record suggests impending Sumatra quakes
Evidence of seafloor rise and fall shows southern Sumatra is at start of new earthquake cycle.
- Space
Astronomers zero in on Milky Way’s black hole
Astronomers report a new value for the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center.
- Tech
Obama selects Steven Chu as Energy Secretary
Featured blog: Chu is an energy researcher who also shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics.
- Space
Reading ripples in the cosmic microwave background
Researchers analyzing the wiggles imprinted on the cosmic microwave background, the radiation leftover from the Big Bang, have now demonstrated that those wiggles can be used to find the fingerprints of dark energy.
- Chemistry
ENV Tidbits: Corals, nano concerns, and more
News nuggets on climate-imperiled corals, nanotech worries, and soft drinks bearing pesticides.
- Physics
Superglass could be new state of matter
Simulations of helium-4 show that a superglass, in which atoms flow without friction, is possible.
