News
- Physics
Time travel nixed in metamaterial world
A desktop universe captures essential properties of the real thing.
By Devin Powell - Physics
How bicycles keep the rubber on the road
An international collaboration tries to explain the surprising stability of two-wheeled travel.
By Devin Powell - Life
New light on moths gone soot-colored
Researchers trace the mutation that led to the dramatic darkening of an insect's wings during England's industrial revolution to a region rich in genes that control color patterns.
- Life
Dangerous dinos came out after dark
Predatory dinosaurs probably stalked the night, scientists say.
- Space
XENON100 fails to find dark matter
A hundred days of solitude for an experiment designed to rendezvous with the universe's missing mass put new limits on the elusive material's properties.
By Ron Cowen - Health & Medicine
Body’s immune protein fights breast cancer
A new study clarifies the role of interleukin-25 in stalling malignancy, possibly clearing the way for new drug development.
By Nathan Seppa - Life
Antarctic lake hides bizarre ecosystem
Bacterial colonies form cones similar to fossilized examples of Earth’s early life.
- Chemistry
Plants and predators pick same poison
Zygaena caterpillars and their herbaceous hosts independently evolved an identical recipe for cyanide.
- Life
Penguin declines may come down to krill
Lack of food appears to be hurting birds on the Antarctic Peninsula.
- Physics
Screwy symmetry revealed
Math trick that reverses spirals and other shapes that twist and turn should provide new ways to understand and design materials.
By Devin Powell - Math
Cells take on traveling salesman problem
With neither minds nor maps- chemical-sensing immune players do well with decades-old mathematical problem, a computer simulation reveals.
- Space
Baffling blowup in distant galaxy
A high-energy blast has gone on for 11 days, puzzling astronomers as to its source.
By Ron Cowen