News
- Animals
Night Flights: Migrating moths may use a nighttime compass
Silver Y moths choose to fly when wind blows in the same direction that they migrate, and they may even compensate when the wind pushes them off-course.
By Susan Milius - Planetary Science
Caught in the Act? Images may reveal planetary birth
Astronomers, for the first time, have imaged dusty clumps surrounding young stars that could be planets in the making.
By Ron Cowen -
Without Substance: ADHD meds don’t up kids’ drug abuse risk
Boys with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder who take prescribed stimulant medication don't become more likely to abuse drugs than boys who don't receive the medication.
By Bruce Bower -
Rare mutations tied to schizophrenia
Individual-specific DNA deletions and duplications, many located in genes involved in brain development, occur in an unusually large percentage of people with schizophrenia.
By Bruce Bower - Materials Science
Squid beaks are hardly soft
Water softens squid beaks toward their base, so they don't cut into the squid's own soft tissue.
- Earth
Tibetan Plateau history gets a lift
The Tibetan Plateau formed when the Indian and Eurasian plates collided, but scientists may have had the order of events wrong.
By Amy Maxmen - Health & Medicine
New drug curbs rheumatoid arthritis in adults, children
The experimental drug tocilizumab quells rheumatoid arthritis in adults and children by inhibiting an inflammatory compound called interleukin-6.
By Nathan Seppa - Health & Medicine
Microbes weigh in on obesity
The kinds of microbes living in an infant's gut may influence weight gain later in childhood.
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High CO2—a gourmet boon for crop pest
Relatively high concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide weaken soybean defenses against Japanese beetles.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Farm girl has the chops
The first big family tree presenting the history of fungus-growing ants shows the leaf-cutters as the newest branch, and a very recent one at that.
By Susan Milius - Health & Medicine
Mouse, Heal Thyself: Therapeutic cloning from a mouse’s own cells
Mice with a Parkinson's disease–like condition benefited from receiving new nerve cells made through therapeutic cloning of their own cells.
- Health & Medicine
Still Waters: Skin disease microbe tracked to ponds, swamps
Scientists establish pond water as the natural environment of Mycobacterium ulcerans, the cause of the skin disease Buruli ulcer.
By Nathan Seppa