News
- Chemistry
Longest carbon-carbon bonds discovered
Researchers have found a type of carbon-carbon bond that's twice as long as the longest naturally occurring bond linking two carbon atoms.
- Chemistry
Carbon nanotubes show superconductivity
Researchers have made individual superconductive carbon nanotubes that are just 0.4 nanometer wide.
- Physics
Insects in the wind lead to less power
A previously puzzling pattern of power loss in wind turbines results from coatings of insects that were smashed by the blades during low winds.
By Peter Weiss - Physics
Turning magnetic resonance inside out
A new method of manipulating magnetic signals makes it possible to gather useful information about a chemical sample—or perhaps one day a person—without often-claustrophobic confinement inside a magnetic coil.
By Peter Weiss - Physics
Quantum queerness gets quick, compact
New ways to trap and cool atoms may hasten practical uses of strange ultracold atom clouds known as Bose-Einstein condensates.
By Peter Weiss - Animals
Don’t look now, but is that dog laughing?
Researchers have identified a particular exhalation that dogs make while playing as a possible counterpart to a human laugh.
By Susan Milius - Paleontology
For past climate clues, ask a stalag-mite
Mites fossilized in cave formations in the American Southwest show that at times during the past 3,200 years the climate there was much wetter and cooler.
By Sid Perkins - Earth
Climate accord reached
Negotiators, without U.S. representatives' input, resolved controversies in Bonn that were blocking an international treaty to limit greenhouse gases.
By Janet Raloff -
Deaf kids establish own sign language
Deaf children in Nicaragua display evidence of having created a fully grammatical sign language on their own in under 2 decades.
By Bruce Bower - Health & Medicine
Synthetic protein may yield malaria vaccine
A molecule patterned after part of the parasite that causes most severe malaria induces a strong immune response in people.
By Nathan Seppa -
Bacteria live inside bacteria in mealybug
In a new twist on how life forms can exploit each other and with implications for how complex cells originated, scientists have discovered one bacterium living inside another.
- Planetary Science
Craft tracks giant dust storm on Mars
The largest dust storm observed on Mars in 25 years is now engulfing the Red Planet.
By Ron Cowen