All Stories
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- Planetary Science
NASA bets on asteroid mission as best path to Mars
NASA wants to bag an asteroid using robotic arms or an enormous sack and place the rock in the moon’s orbit for study. This may keep astronauts working but not, as NASA claims, get them Mars-ready.
- Oceans
Mercury at ocean surface may have tripled since preindustrial times
Questions remain over dangers of toxic metal in environment.
- Neuroscience
For neurons, birthday matters
How brain cells make their connections during development still isn’t well understood. A new study shows that in the eye, a neuron’s birthday makes a difference in how it finds its targets.
- Psychology
Bilingual homes may give babies a learning lift
Hearing two languages during the first six months of life linked to an early mental advantage.
- Computing
Brain-inspired computer chip mimics 1 million neurons
By processing data in parallel, computer chips modeled after the human brain could perform certain tasks, such as pattern recognition, faster and more energy-efficiently than traditional computers.
- Animals
Here’s your chance to see the last passenger pigeon
On display for the 100th anniversary of her species’ extinction, the final passenger pigeon specimen looks pretty good.
- Earth
Cloud seeding fueled fire about weather modification
Experiments in 1964 resulted in “exploding” clouds.
- Health & Medicine
New tests screen for lethal prion disease
Urine and nasal swabs can detect small amounts of the abnormal prions that cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
- Tech
Robots start flat, then pop into shape and crawl
The machines use heated hinges to transform into shape and crawl around.
- Animals
Octomom and six other extreme animal parents
The octopus that brooded her young for 4.5 years is just the start when it comes to tales of extreme parenting.
- Planetary Science
Rosetta spacecraft confabs with a comet
After a 10-year chase, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft has met up with comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
