News
- Health & Medicine
Healing the heart from within
An unusual mouse strain can regenerate heart tissue when the organ is damaged.
- Health & Medicine
Stem cell research marches on
Cells from human embryos can be transformed into heart cells or insulin-secreting cells.
- Paleontology
Completing a titan by getting a head
When paleontologists unearthed the skeleton of a 70-million-year-old titanosaur in Madagascar in the late 1990s, they also recovered something that had been missing from previous such finds: a skull that matched the body.
- Paleontology
That’s no footprint, it’s got no toes
The impressions near Isona, Spain, long thought to be fossilized dinosaur footprints may actually record the feeding behavior of stingrays.
- Animals
Big woodpeckers trash others’ homes
Pileated woodpeckers destroy in an afternoon the nesting cavities that take endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers 6 years to excavate.
- Animals
When rare species eat endangered ones
To cut down on their salmon smolt catch, Caspian terns were encouraged to move from one island to another in the Columbia River.
- Animals
Oops. New feathers turn out lousy
Going to the trouble of molting doesn't really get rid of a bird's lice after all.
- Animals
Stinking decorations protect nests
The common waxbill's habit of adorning its nests with fur plucked from carnivore scat turns out to discourage attacks from predators.
- Chemistry
Chemists redesign natural antifreeze
Researchers have synthesized a family of artificial molecules that resemble the compounds that keep Antarctic and Arctic fish from freezing.
- Earth
L.A. moves, but not in the way expected
Researchers monitoring small ground motions along faults in Southern California ended up detecting an altogether different phenomenon: the rise and fall of the ground as local governments pump billions of gallons of water into and out of the region's aquifers.
- Astronomy
Shocks jolt jet set galaxy, X rays reveal
A new image of the nearby galaxy Centaurus A reveals the first details of a phenomenon associated with the core of many galaxies: a huge jet of high-energy particles shooting out from a supermassive black hole.
- Animals
20/20 lenses coat body of sea creature
The skeleton of brittlestars doubles as an array of optically precise lenses that rival plastic microlenses designed by engineers.
