News

  1. Anthropology

    Lucy’s kind takes humanlike turn

    A new analysis of fossils from a more than 3-million-year-old species in the human evolutionary family reveals that the males were only moderately larger than the females, a finding that has implications for ancient social behavior.

    By Bruce Bower
  2. Earth

    Digging for Fire: Burning peat underlies Mali’s hot ground

    Superheated ground and smoking potholes in northern Mali are evidence not of volcanic activity but of a layer of peat that is burning 2 feet below the desert surface.

    By Sorcha McDonagh
  3. Health & Medicine

    DNA Differences Add Risk: Altered genes show up in Lou Gehrig’s disease

    People with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are more likely than healthy people to have certain variations in the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) gene, suggesting variant VEGF contributes to the disease.