News
- Animals
Woodpecker video is challenged and defended
The video released last spring as evidence that the ivory-billed woodpecker exists may show a common pileated woodpecker, some critics say.
- Humans
Science’s New Guard: Winners of annual competition get honors and hefty scholarships
For her water-quality research project, an 18-year-old from Utah earned top honors among 40 competitors in the final phase of the annual Intel Science Talent Search.
- Materials Science
The art of the fold
With DNA origami, researchers can make complex nanostructures.
- Animals
Can You Hear Me Now? Frogs in roaring streams use ultrasonic calls
A small frog living beside Chinese hot springs may be the first amphibian known to use ultrasound in its calls.
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Grown-Up Connections: Mice, monkeys remake brain links as adults
Two new studies offer a glimpse of extensive remodeling of nerve connections in the brain's outer layer, or cortex, during adulthood in mice and monkeys.
- Materials Science
Networking with Friends: Nanotech material reconnects severed neurons
A new material made of nanometer-sized protein particles appears to be able to bridge the gap between severed nerves.
- Earth
Shaken but Not Stirred: Rock formations reveal past quakes’ size limit
Dozens of precariously balanced rocks in southern California tell a consistent story that earthquakes at nearby faults in recent millennia haven't exceeded magnitude 7.
- Health & Medicine
Stent Repair: Coated replacements better than radiation
To clear clogged stents, the small mesh cylinders that doctors implant to prop open blood vessels, inserting a second, specially-coated stent works better than treatment with radiation.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Triumph: Satellite confirms birth theory of universe
The most detailed portrait ever taken of the radiation left over from the Big Bang provides fresh evidence that the universe began with a tremendous growth spurt, expanding from subatomic scales to the size of a grapefruit in less than a trillionth of a second.
- Earth
Manufacturers agree to phase out nonstick chemical
Complying with a request from the Environmental Protection Agency, the companies that make the likely carcinogen perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) have agreed to phase out its release worldwide by 2015.
- Anthropology
Evolution persisted in agricultural era
Natural selection has continued to propagate survival-enhancing gene variants in human populations over the past 10,000 years, according to a new genetic analysis.
- Plants
Small difference factored big in rice domestication
A change in a single letter of a rice plant's genetic code gave it the ability to hold onto grains until harvest.
