News
- Oceans
Plastic may take unexpected routes to marine garbage patches
By redefining ocean boundaries, researchers offer new insight to how litter moves through the oceans and who’s to blame for the floating clumps of trash.
By Beth Mole - Animals
Archerfish mouth is the secret of precision spit
Trained fish shoot down two hypotheses for their fine spit control but reveal fancy mouth work.
By Susan Milius - Animals
A fish reared out of water walks better
The normally aquatic fish Senegal bichir raised on land suggests how ancient species might have transitioned into terrestrial ones.
By Susan Milius - Health & Medicine
Rabies races up nerve cells
By hijacking a transporter protein and hitting the gas, the disease-causing rabies virus races up long nerve cells that stretch through the body, a new study finds.
By Meghan Rosen - Genetics
Ebola genome clarifies origins of West African outbreak
Genetic analyses suggest that a single infected person sparked the ongoing Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
- Anthropology
Siberians came to North American Arctic in two waves
Siberian ancestors of the modern-day Inuit replaced a 4,000-year-old North American Arctic culture, a DNA study reveals.
By Bruce Bower - Health & Medicine
To grow new knee cartilage, look to the nose
Cartilage-making cells from the nose grew into patches that successfully replaced damaged or missing cartilage in the knees of goats and of humans.
By Nathan Seppa - Astronomy
Wake of nearby supernova hints at explosion’s origins
Gamma rays from radioactive decay of cobalt formed in a nearby supernova reveal unprecedented details of the explosion’s aftermath.
- Quantum Physics
Blind quantum camera snaps photos of Schrödinger’s cat
Quantum weirdness lets physicists snap photo without collecting incoming light from cardboard cat subject.
- Neuroscience
Laser light rewrites memories in mice
Mouse experiment demonstrates that good memories can be transformed into bad ones, and vice versa.
- Chemistry
Liquid salts break through armored bacteria on skin
Compounds called ionic liquids can penetrate bacterial biofilms on skin to deliver antibiotics to potentially life-threatening infections.
By Sam Lemonick - Climate
Multiple oceans may help stall global warming
The Atlantic and Southern oceans, not the Pacific, may be largely to blame for the recent pause in rising global temperatures.
By Beth Mole