News
- Earth
An electronic nose that smells plants’ pain
Device can detect distress signals from plants that are harmed, under attack.
- Humans
Rumors of Gulf War Syndrome
British Gulf War veterans responded to military secrecy by talking among themselves about their health problems. Through rumor, the vets collectively defined the controversial ailment known as Gulf War Syndrome, a new study suggests.
- Life
Fossil find may document largest snake
Rocks beneath a coal mine in Colombia have yielded fossils of what could be the world's largest snake, a 12.8-meter–long behemoth that's a relative of today's boa constrictors.
- Earth
Primordial soup lives again
Fifty-five years later, new analyses of leftovers from Stanley Miller's famous 'primordial soup' experiment suggest that life could have originated near volcanoes.
- Health & Medicine
Bacteria that do logic
A team engineers microbes to perform AND, OR, NAND and NOR logic operations.
- Space
Hubble revives
A plan to switch the Hubble Space Telescope to a backup system works, waking up the telescope after more than two weeks of silence.
- Life
How Tiktaalik got its neck
The oldest fossil with a neck, Tiktaalik roseae, shows how animals developed a head for living on land.
- Health & Medicine
Streamlined polio vaccine fights outbreaks
Back to basics: A simplified polio vaccine works better than the standard approach and overcomes an unforeseen shortcoming in the widely used oral vaccine.
- Humans
Bypassing paralyzed nerves
Implanted electrode helps paralyzed monkey clench its forearm muscles.
- Humans
Infectious finds at ancient site
A DNA analysis of skeletons found at a submerged Israeli site produces the earliest known evidence of human tuberculosis, now known to have existed at a 9,000-year-old farming settlement.
- Life
Grunting humans, moles scare earthworms
Science tackles the old mystery of why worm grunters who rub a stake in the ground can catch earthworms.
- Planetary Science
Huge cyclone churns at Saturn’s north pole
Planetary scientists have gotten their closest look yet at polar storms on the ringed planet. These polar cyclones are big enough to engulf Earth.
