News
- Animals
Ear for Killers: Seals discern foes’ from neighbor-whales’ calls
Harbor seals eavesdrop on killer whales and can tell the harmless neighborhood fish eaters from roving gangs with a taste for fresh seal.
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Thoughtful Lessons: Training may enhance intellect in elderly
The largest study of its kind finds that a brief training course in memory, reasoning, or visual concentration boosts performance on laboratory tests of these cognitive skills among physically healthy elderly people.
- Earth
Shaked Alaska: A sleepy fault wakes and reveals new links
One of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded on U.S. land shook south-central Alaska on Nov. 3, revealing activity along the Denali fault.
- Physics
Speedy impacts send microwave distress calls
Laboratory smash-ups mimicking those between fast-moving space debris and satellites appear to emit microwave bursts, suggesting that microwave detectors might someday prove useful for monitoring the health of spacecraft.
- Animals
Tadpoles kill by supersuction
A high-speed video shows tiny African tadpoles that catch their prey in a manner unlike that used by any other frog larvae: by shooting out a tubular mouth for superfast suction.
- Health & Medicine
Immune protein may stall HIV
People who have HIV but don't progress to AIDS make extra perforin, a protein that helps kill infected cells.
- Planetary Science
Europa’s freckles
Reddish spots and shallow pits that pepper the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa may mark regions where warmer and less dense ice percolates to the surface.
- Planetary Science
Another moon for Uranus
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of the 21st moon known to be orbiting Uranus.
- Health & Medicine
Duct tape sticks it to warts
Treating a wart with a covering of duct tape seems to be more effective—and less painful—than removing the wart by freezing it with liquid nitrogen.
- Earth
Pesticides block male hormones
Some common pesticides can block the ability of androgens, male sex hormones, to trigger normal gene activities.
- Earth
Weed killer feminizes fish
The weed killer atrazine can turn normally hermaphroditic fish into females, a new study shows.
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