All Stories
- Animals
Cockroach personalities can speed or slow group decisions
The mix of temperaments in an alarmed cluster of cockroaches changes how quickly they make group decisions.
- Humans
Baby brains undergo dramatic changes in utero
Developing human brains experience more than 28,000 changes in a molecular process that governs gene activity.
- Plants
Isaac Newton’s theory of how water defies gravity in plants
A passage in one of Isaac Newton’s journals reveals that he may have theorized basic plant hydrodynamics long before botanists.
- Animals
Migrating ibises take turns leading the flying V
During migration, ibises flying in a V formation cooperate and take turns flying in wake to save energy, a new study suggests.
- Particle Physics
New particle may be made of four quarks
A newly discovered particle may be comprised of four quarks, a new study posits.
- Environment
Tuna mercury rising
From 1998 to 2008, mercury levels in Hawaiian Yellowfin tuna have increased by 3.8 percent per year, researchers suggest.
- Climate
Warming Arctic will let Atlantic and Pacific fish mix
The ultra-cold, ice-covered Arctic Ocean has kept fish species from the Atlantic and Pacific separate for more than a million years — but global warming is changing that.
- Anthropology
Ancient Maya bookmakers get paged in Guatemala
New discoveries peg ritual specialists as force behind bark-paper tomes and wall murals.
- Physics
When entering a black hole, fasten your seat belt
Rapidly spinning black holes can generate turbulence, a new analysis shows.
- Astronomy
Giant rings encircle young exoplanet
Stretching 90 million kilometers from their center, 37 stripes of dust around exoplanet were probably crafted by moons.
- Animals
How a spider spins electrified nanosilk
The cribellate orb spider (Uloborus plumipes) hacks and combs its silk to weave electrically charged nanofibers, a new study suggests.
- Cosmology
Dust erases evidence for gravity wave detection
The claimed detection of primordial gravitational waves does not hold up after taking into account galactic dust, a new analysis concludes.
