All Stories
- Paleontology
Old Colonies: Ancient formations are termites’ legacy
New analyses of mysterious pillars at two sites in southern Africa suggest that the sandstone features are petrified remains of large, elaborate termite nests.
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19384
Perhaps Stefan Koelsch’s study should have been limited to trained musicians, rather than exclude them. Word and visual associations in music are vigorously reinforced in movie soundtracks, cartoons, and elsewhere. But classical composers and musicians typically take pains to isolate their musicianship from any and all nonmusical elements. This inquiry may shine light on the […]
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Song Sung Blue: In brain, music and language overlap
Different classical-music passages facilitate thinking about specific verbal categories, triggering brain responses previously seen only when people recognized related linguistic meanings.
- Animals
Fox Selection: Bottleneck survivors show surprising variety
Foxes native to a California island—famous for the least genetic diversity ever reported in a sexually reproducing animal—have some variation after all.
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19383
The observations in this article are of stars and galaxies billions of light-years away and billions of years old. Has anyone ever thought about what the universe out there looks like today? Earl RosenwinkelDuluth, Minn. People have thought about what the universe looks like now and what it will look like in the distant future, […]
- Astronomy
Wrenching Findings: Homing in on dark energy
In an analysis of a group of distant supernovas, astronomers have found hints that dark energy is distributed uniformly throughout space.
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19382
Your article describes a great theory in a theoretical world. The purpose of a coin toss is to determine an outcome in the real world, however. Did the guys doing the various analyses factor in the effect of the coin bouncing on the ground or being fumbled in an attempted catch? Ed EiermanRomney, W.Va. The […]
- Math
Toss Out the Toss-Up: Bias in heads-or-tails
Coin tossing is inherently biased, with the coin more likely to land on the same face it started on.
- Materials Science
Hard Stuff: Cooked diamonds don’t dent
When exposed to high heat and pressure, single-crystal diamonds become extraordinarily hard.
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- Anthropology
Linguists in Siberia record dying tongues
Researchers trekking through remote Russian villages have identified and interviewed some of the last remaining speakers of two Turkic languages.
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Microbe exhibits out-of-body activity
New evidence indicates that anthrax bacteria may sometimes live freely and reproduce in soil, perhaps exchanging genes with other bacteria, instead of staying dormant in spores.
