News
- Neuroscience
Abnormal sense of touch may play role in autism
Autism-related genes are important for touch perception, a sense that may help the brain develop normally, a study of mice suggests.
- Life
Obesity’s weight gain message starts in gut
Acetate made by gut microbes stimulates weight gain, research in rodents suggests.
- Anthropology
Hobbit history gets new preface
Jaw, tooth fossils put new spin on evolution of Homo floresiensis.
- Life
By leaking light, squid hides in plain sight
Glass squid camouflage their eyes with wonderfully inefficient bioluminescence.
- Earth
Spy satellites reveal early start to Antarctic ice shelf collapse
Declassified spy satellite images reveal that Antarctica’s Larsen B ice shelf began destabilizing decades earlier than previously thought.
- Quantum Physics
Quantum weirdness survives space travel
Quantum weirdness travels from Earth to space and back again.
- Animals
Pygmy blue whales deepen their moans
Sri Lankan pygmy blue whales are tweaking their calls — making one part deeper and keeping another part the same — but scientists can’t say why. The finding injects a new wrinkle in theories about blue whale calls.
- Genetics
Ancient DNA tells of two origins for dogs
Genetic analysis of an ancient Irish mutt reveals complicated history of dog domestication.
- Planetary Science
Jupiter’s stormy weather no tempest in teapot
New radio observations reveal how ammonia moves about beneath Jupiter’s clouds and provide a sneak peek at what NASA’s Juno mission will learn later this year.
- Archaeology
Earliest evidence of fire making in Europe found
Clues to Stone Age fire making surface in a Spanish cave.
- Life
Jumping gene turned peppered moths the color of soot
A single gene is behind some of the most famous examples of natural selection.
- Earth
Plate tectonics just a stage in Earth’s life cycle
Plate tectonics is just a phase in a planet’s lifetime between conditions that are too hot or too cold for the planet-churning mechanism, new simulations suggest.
