News
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Bacteria make locust-swarm signal
A pheromone that helps drive locusts into a swarm comes from bacteria in their gut.
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Over there! Eat them instead!
An ant will ignore a single golden egg bug and attack a mating pair, a choice that may explain why singles hang around pairs.
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Wash that mouth out with bacteria!
Genetically engineered bacteria may stop tooth decay by replacing the ones in the mouth that destroy tooth enamel.
- Earth
Undersea volcano: Heard but not seen
The search is on for an undersea eruption near the Japanese volcanic island chain.
- Earth
Ice age forest spruces up ecology record
Scientists have recently discovered a 10,000-year-old forest buried in the sand in Michigan.
- Physics
Photon-in-a-box slings atom into orbit
A single photon confined to a tiny, mirror-lined cavity becomes electrically strong enough to swing an atom in loops.
- Physics
Neon gives healthy glow to reactor
Preferring neon to nicotine, magnetic-fusion reactors called tokamaks get a performance boost from puffs of the noble gas.
- Earth
Pollution Keeps Rain up in the Air
New satellite data indicate that aerosol pollution can break up water droplets in clouds and stop rain.
- Materials Science
Rice hulls could nourish Silicon Valley
Scientists are developing ways to extract and purify the silicon that occurs naturally in rice hulls.
- Planetary Science
Meteoric wallop may have diversified life
A new study suggests that the evolutionary burst on Earth some 540 million years ago occurred around the time that cosmic debris began pummeling our planet at an increasing rate.
- Health & Medicine
Cell transplants combat diabetes in mice
Scientists have successfully reversed diabetes in mice by harvesting immature pancreatic cells that make insulin from one mouse, growing them in culture, and transplanting them into a mouse with the disease, which then recedes.
- Health & Medicine
HIV sexual spread exploits immune sentinels
The virus that causes AIDS latches onto a protein called DC-SIGN to hitch a ride on immune cells in mucus membranes and spread through the body.
