News
- Anthropology
Fossil skull spurs identity dispute
A dispute has broken out over whether a recently discovered, 7-million-year-old fossil skull represents the earliest known member of the human evolutionary family or an ancient ape.
- Earth
Haze clears on sooty climate conditions
The results of a new study suggest that soot plays a bigger role in regional climate changes than scientists had previously realized.
- Physics
Ring around the proton
An orbiting electron accelerated to relativistic velocities by a laser in a strong magnetic field can behave like a ring-shaped electron cloud spinning around the nucleus.
- Physics
Writing with warm atoms
Researchers demonstrated that they can use a scanning tunneling microscope to position atoms in microscopic patterns at room temperature.
- Archaeology
Ancient origins of fire use
Human ancestors may have learned to control fire 1.7 million years ago in eastern Africa.
- Archaeology
Guard dogs and horse riders
More than 5,000 years ago, the Botai people of central Asia had ritual practices that appeared in many later cultures.
- Earth
Global warming is marmot wake-up call
Marmots are coming out of hibernation earlier, while chipmunks and ground squirrels sleep longer-effects that could be attributed to global warming.
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Chicken Rank: Hen social position shifts egg hormones
A study of leghorn chickens has linked hormone concentrations in a hen's eggs to her rank in the pecking order.
- Health & Medicine
Making Bone: Novel form of vitamin D builds up rat skeleton
A newly synthesized form of Vitamin D induces bone-making cells to capture calcium and fortify bone mass in rats, suggesting it might work against osteoporosis in people.
- Humans
Nobel prizes honor innovative approaches
The 2002 Nobel prizes pay tribute to an international sampling of scientists who developed powerful new techniques for expanding the horizons of research.
- Physics
Cooled device unveils a quantum limit
A novel suspended device chilled near absolute zero demonstrates the existence of a basic unit, or quantum, of heat conductance—the first evidence of quantum mechanics in mechanical structures.
- Earth
Lawn Agent Cues Embryo Shortfall: Herbicide weeds out mice in the womb
Minuscule amounts of over-the-counter weed killers impair reproduction in mice.
