News
- Math
Prime conjecture verified to new heights
Computations show that all even integers up to 4 x 1014 can be written as the sum of two prime numbers, lending support to the Goldbach conjecture.
-
Babies posture to learn
Infants make better action-oriented decisions when they adopt a familiar posture, such as sitting upright, instead of an unfamiliar one, such as crawling.
-
Hypnotic hues in the brain
Hypnosis uniquely colors the activity of brain areas involved in visual perception, supporting the view that hypnotized people enter a distinct psychological state rather than only play a role designed to please the hypnotist.
-
Banning deer boosts migratory birds
In a 9-year test, excluding deer raised the population numbers among bird species, such as hooded warblers, that have a high conservation priority.
-
Parasite deludes rats into liking cats
A protozoan that infects rats dims their wariness around cats and can even lead to what Oxford researchers call a fatal attraction.
-
Wasp redesigns web of doomed spider
A wasp larva injects a spider with a web-altering drug, driving the spider to spin a shelter just right for a wasp cocoon.
- Earth
Where’s Waldo . . . and 6 billion others?
Scientists have combined satellite imagery and detailed census data to develop a worldwide database that can provide estimates of the number of people located in areas on a grid that has boxes with areas of 1 square kilometer or less.
- Earth
Early web-footed bird made impression
Researchers have discovered the fossil tracks of an otherwise unknown bird in 110-million-year-old sediments, which pushes back evidence of web-footed birds by at least 25 million years.
- Earth
Solving one mystery of polar wander
Long-term fluctuations in pressure at the ocean's bottom may be the driving force for the Chandler wobble, which causes the North Pole to wander about 20 feet every 14 months or so.
- Chemistry
Crystal Reveals Unexpected Beginnings
For the first time, researchers have directly observed a protein begin to crystallize, and they've found it has a peculiar shape.
- Astronomy
Evidence grows for nearby planetary system
Astronomers have found the nearest known planet that lies outside the solar system, a mere 10.5 light-years from Earth.
-
Ebola protein explains deadly mystery
The infamous virus called Ebola has a surface protein that kills cells in blood vessels.
