News
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Hands-on Math Insights: Teachers’ mismatched gestures boost learning
As teachers instruct a child, they typically use their hands as well as their voices, but only certain gestures pack a powerful educational punch.
- Paleontology
Reptilian Repast: Ancient mammals preyed on young dinosaurs
Two nearly complete sets of fossilized remains from 130-million-year-old rocks are revealing fresh details about the size and dietary habits of ancient mammals, hinting that some of these creatures were large enough to feast on small dinosaurs.
- Math
When Laziness Pays: Math explains how cooperation and cheating evolve
Researchers have developed a mathematical model that helps explain how cooperation and cheating evolve among simple organisms.
- Astronomy
Ultimate Retro: Modern echoes of the early universe
Two teams of astronomers have for the first time detected the surviving notes of a cosmic symphony created just after the Big Bang, when the universe was a foggy soup of matter and radiation.
- Health & Medicine
Antibiotics could save nerves
Penicillin and its family of related antibiotics may prevent the type of nerve damage that occurs in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other diseases.
- Animals
Sparrows learn song from pieces
Young white-crowned sparrows don't have to hear a song straight through in order to learn it; playing the song in mixed-up paired phrases will do.
- Earth
Really hot water
Hot-water tanks can accumulate radioactive deposits from naturally occurring radioactive material.
- Earth
Landscaping stones may pose risks to the environment
Chemical analyses suggest that planting ornamental rock gardens in some cases may not be doing the environment any favors.
- Earth
Big quakes can free grounded icebergs
Data gathered by equipment installed on an immense iceberg off Antarctica suggest that the ground motions spawned by large, distant earthquakes can free such bergs to float again.
- Earth
Seismic vibes gauge Earth’s crust
New seismic observations are adding to scientists' knowledge of the thickness of Earth's crust, especially in the Southern Hemisphere.
- Animals
Mixing Genes: Bird immigrants make unexpected differences
A pair of decades-long studies of birds moving into other birds' neighborhoods show that immigration can have a quirkier effect than predicted by the usual textbook view.
- Physics
Twinkle Toes: How geckos’ sticky feet stay clean
Besides allowing geckos to cling to walls and ceilings, the millions of tiny fibers on the undersides of these lizards' toes clean themselves with each step.
