News
- Plants
Tough Frills: Ferns’ wimp stage aces survival test
A supposedly fragile stage in the life of ferns shows surprising toughness.
By Susan Milius - Health & Medicine
Superbug: What makes one bacterium so deadly
A molecule that pierces immune cells gives some aggressive antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria their fearsome virulence.
- Earth
New climate sensor: Swiss grapes
Records of grape harvests reveal the summer climate in parts of Switzerland as far back as the 1400s.
By Sid Perkins - Health & Medicine
Too little sleep may fatten kids
Lack of sleep may promote childhood obesity.
By Janet Raloff - Tech
Bucky shrink-wrap
Scientists filmed cage-shaped carbon molecules as they shrank to become buckyballs.
- Agriculture
Insects laughing at Bt toxin? Try this
A new countermeasure restores the toxicity of Bt pesticides to insects that have evolved resistance.
By Susan Milius - Anthropology
Wild chimps scale branches of culture
Distinctive behaviors in wild-chimp communities point to a basic cultural capacity in these animals.
By Bruce Bower - Animals
Mr. Not Wrong: Not my species? Not a problem
Female toads that accept mates of another species in tough times may be looking after their own interest.
By Susan Milius -
Ladies First: Genes skew sex ratios in evolutionary struggle
A gene in fruit flies favors the birth of females, until another gene comes along to restore balance between the sexes.
- Earth
Yellowstone Rising: Magma floods into chamber beneath park
Some parts of the terrain in Yellowstone National Park have been rising as much as 7 centimeters per year as molten rock wells up beneath the park.
By Sid Perkins -
Not Like Clockwork: High-fat diet disrupts daily routines of mice
Fatty diets disrupt the sleep and metabolic cycles of mice by changing the activity of genes.
- Agriculture
Silencing Pests: Altered plants make RNA that keeps insects at bay
Engineered plants make genetic material that disables critical genes in insects that eat the plants, offering a possible new strategy for agricultural-pest control.
By Sarah Webb