News
- Paleontology
The last ice age wasn’t totally icy
Radiocarbon dating of fossils taken from caves on islands along Alaska's southeastern coast suggest that at least a portion of the area remained ice-free during the last ice age.
- Paleontology
Allosaurus as a Jurassic headbanger
The skull of the carnivorous dinosaur Allosaurus fragilis can resist levels of stress much higher than those expected from chewing, which may provide insight into the animal's method of attacking its prey.
- Paleontology
Calling all orthodontists. . .
Researchers have unearthed fossils of a theropod dinosaur whose front teeth grew almost directly forward, which sets it apart from all other related species.
- Animals
Shielded cells help fish ignore noise
Fish can sort out the interesting ripples from the background rush of water currents through sensors shielded in canals that run along their flanks.
- Paleontology
Early Biped Fossil Pops Up in Europe
A newly described, nearly complete 290-million-year-old fossil of an ancient reptile pushes back the evidence for terrestrial bipedalism by 60 million years.
- Astronomy
Rendezvous gets more personal with Eros
Venturing closer to a space rock than any satellite has ever gone before, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR)-Shoemaker mission last week took the sharpest images ever recorded of an asteroid.
- Health & Medicine
Prostate enzyme triggers cancer drug
A new drug reverses advanced prostate cancer in mice by enlisting the aid of prostate-specific antigen, an enzyme found in most prostate tumors.
- Health & Medicine
Killing immune cells thwarts arthritis
Researchers have successfully treated people with rheumatoid arthritis by temporarily wiping out most of their antibody-producing immune cells.
- Physics
Signs of mass-giving particle get stronger
The promising search at a collider in Switzerland for the Higgs boson—the crucial and last undetected fundamental particle predicted by the central theory of particle physics—became even more of a cliff-hanger as a new, strong hint of the particle appeared on the eve of the machine's second scheduled demise.
- Anthropology
‘Y guy’ steps into human-evolution debate
The common ancestor of today's males lived in Africa between 35,000 and 89,000 years ago, according to a contested DNA analysis.
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Two aspects of sleep share a master
A molecular connection between the timing of sleep—a part of circadian rhythms—and how long animals slumber each day is demonstrated for the first time.
- Planetary Science
Threat to Titan mission deepens
If a communications problem between the Huygens probe and its mother craft is not corrected, as much as two-thirds of the data gathered by the probe during its 2004 descent through Titan's atmosphere could be lost.
