News
- Health & Medicine
Bacteria flourish in favorite ecosystems on the human body
Study offers most comprehensive inventory yet of the human microbiome and a basis for understanding how those microbes affect health.
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Horse genome added to growing list of barnyard genetics projects
Equines join cucumbers and pigs as the most recent additions to the roster of organisms to have their complete DNA code spelled out. The new work on horses also helps answer a key question about chromosome structures called centromeres.
- Paleontology
Pollination in the pre-flower-power era
Scorpionflies with long-reaching mouthparts may have helped plants procreate long before blossoms evolved.
- Space
Gamma-ray sources guide astronomers to pulsars
Gamma-ray emissions are providing a guide to finding the compact, rapidly rotating remnants of massive stars known as pulsars.
- Humans
Newborn babies may cry in their mother tongues
Days after birth, French and German infants wail to the melodic structure of their languages.
- Space
Giant galaxy graveyard grows
The largest known galactic congregation is bigger than astronomers thought—and its inhabitants are all dead or dying.
- Health & Medicine
Vaccine may head off genital cancer in women
An experimental immunization can clear up premalignant growths caused by the human papillomavirus in some patients.
- Earth
Small earthquakes may not predict larger ones
Quakes far from tectonic plate boundaries may simply be aftershocks of ancient temblors.
- Animals
Textbook case of color-changing spider reopened
Female crab spiders switch colors to match flowers but may not fool their prey
- Space
Volcanic and ferric surprises on Mercury
Volcanic activity is more recent than expected, MESSENGER shows on its third flyby of the planet. Also, surface iron occurs as oxides.
- Space
New way to help avoid a space shuttle disaster
A new technique to make shuttle launches safer combines tricks from particle colliders, moon landings and vulture tracking.
- Climate
Mount Kilimanjaro could soon be bald
The world-renowned ice caps could disappear by 2022, new research suggests.
