News
- Health & Medicine
Szechuan pepper taps at nerve fibers
The spice makes lips tingle at 50 beats per second, researchers find.
- Microbes
Horsetail spores don’t need legs to jump
Forget legs. A plant uses curly, humidity-controlled ribbons to make epic leaps.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Avoiding feces may be ‘luxury’ wild mice can’t afford
For a mouse in the woods, finding any food at all may trump poopy locations.
By Susan Milius - Chemistry
Meteorite that fell last year contains surprising molecules
Compounds in space rocks like the one that broke up over California may have helped seed life on Earth.
By Andrew Grant - Math
Egypt wasn’t built in a day, but it did rise quickly
New timeline of ancient civilization’s earliest days finds little time between earliest villages and dominant centralized state.
By Andrew Grant - Humans
Babies perk up to sounds of ancient hazards
Evolution has primed infants to focus on noises linked to longstanding dangers, a new study finds.
By Bruce Bower - Life
Many genes in dolphins and bats evolved in the same way to allow echolocation
Widespread changes scattered across the genomes of distantly related species cooperated to craft the trait.
- Health & Medicine
Device offers promise of no brain tumor left behind
A new technique might allow surgeons to identify with precision where brain cancer ends and healthy tissue begins.
By Nathan Seppa - Health & Medicine
Gut infections keep mice lean
Bacteria can invade one rodent from another, preventing both from getting fat.
By Meghan Rosen - Astronomy
Radio telescope images reveal nebula’s heart of carbon
ALMA takes detailed look at elements surrounding dying star.
- Animals
Rats induced into hibernation-like state
Injection of compound causes animals to slow heartbeat, lower body temperature.
- Health & Medicine
Test could warn of problems for kidney transplant recipients
A urine test for an immune protein might tell doctors whether a patient is headed for trouble.
By Nathan Seppa