News
- Psychology
Bad acts spark a ‘cheater’s high’
Committing low-stakes acts of dishonesty enhances perpetrators’ moods.
By Bruce Bower - Earth
Buried Saharan rivers might have been early expressways
Humans might have migrated across the arid region along three once-lush waterways.
By Erin Wayman - Physics
Notorious ‘Big G’ gets a little larger
Gravitational constant is difficult to measure, but physicists calculate with new number.
By Meghan Rosen - Animals
Young insect legs have real meshing gears
Tiny teeth on hiplike structures keep legs in sync, allowing juvenile planthoppers to jump.
By Susan Milius - Astronomy
At last, Voyager 1 slips into interstellar space
Solar blast data provides definitive evidence that Voyager 1 has cruised beyond the heliosphere and into interstellar space.
By Andrew Grant - Health & Medicine
Vaccine stops deadly sand-fly-spread scourge in animal test
A DNA vaccine triggers protection against the sand-fly-borne scourge Leishmania.
By Nathan Seppa - 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