News
- Agriculture
Nation by nation, evidence thin that boosting crop yields conserves land
Intensifying agriculture may not necessarily return farmland to nature without policy help.
- Chemistry
Metal gives pigment the blues
Researchers studying manganese oxides unexpectedly discover a new way to achieve blue hue.
- Computing
First programmable quantum computer created
System uses ultracold beryllium ions to tackle 160 randomly chosen programs.
-
Low-tech approach stifles high-risk Nipah virus
Protecting palm-tree sap from bats may limit spread of deadly disease, a study in Bangladesh shows.
- Humans
Visual illusion stumps adults but not kids
Finding suggests that sensitivity to visual context develops slowly.
- Earth
Where humans go, pepper virus follows
Plant pathogen could help track waters polluted with human waste.
-
- Health & Medicine
Malaria shows signs of resisting best drug used to fight it
The frontline malaria medicine artemisinin shows gaps in effectiveness in Southeast Asia.
- Animals
Classic view of leaf-cutter ants overlooked nitrogen-fixing partner
A fresh look at a fungus-insect partnership that biologists have studied for more than a century uncovers a role for bacteria.
- Life
Corn genome a maze of unusual diversity
Multiple teams announce complete draft of the maize genome, with a full plate of surprises that include hints about hybrid vigor.
- Humans
Obese people can misjudge body size
Survey finds that many overweight individuals consider their body size normal and healthy despite having health problems
- Life
Climate not really what doomed large North American mammals
Prevalence of a dung fungus over time suggests megafauna extinctions at end of last ice age started before vegetation changed.
