News
- Animals
Wing Ding: Bird rubs feathers for cricketlike song
Scientists say that they have found the first vertebrate to make its courtship music in the same way as a cricket does.
- Physics
Glints from Inner Space: Sensing Earth’s hidden radioactivity
Physicists have observed signatures of radioactivity deep within Earth, enabling measurement of planet-wide thorium and uranium quantities.
- Astronomy
Planet potential
Observations with the Submillimeter Array on Hawaii's Mauna Kea reveal that, despite their bombardment by a stellar bully, the disks in Orion have enough material to form planets.
- Physics
Why isn’t the sky violet, Daddy?
A new analysis of why the sky looks blue reveals that the reason may be the combined effects of the atmosphere and of our eyes' color-sensing apparatus.
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Bipolar kids harbor unique brain trait
Children and teenagers with bipolar disorder, a severe mental ailment that involves sharp mood swings, display unusually low tissue volume in a brain area involved in learning to regulate emotions.
- Physics
In search of the imperfect nanocrystal
Semiconductor nanocrystals can incorporate property-enhancing impurities into their growing structures as long as the crystals have facets onto which such atoms can strongly adhere.
- Earth
Weighty evidence on testicular cancer
New evidence supports a theory that men who were exposed to excess estrogenic hormones at an early stage of fetal development may face an elevated risk of testicular cancer.
- Astronomy
A new X-ray eye on the cosmos
To study some of the hottest regions in the universe, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency has launched the coldest instrument ever flown.
- Archaeology
Judeo-Christian ties buried in Rome
New radiocarbon dates from one of ancient Rome's underground cemeteries, or catacombs, indicates that these structures were built in the Jewish community more than a century before early Christians started to do the same.
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Cell death may spur aging
Genetic mutations in cells' internal powerhouses could contribute to aging by stifling tissue maintenance.
- Health & Medicine
Tumors in Touch: Cancer cells spur vessel formation through contact
Some tumor cells use a newfound mechanism to prompt neighboring cells into forming blood vessels that then nourish the cancer.
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Reflections of Primate Minds: Mirror images strike monkeys as special
Capuchin monkeys don't react to their own mirror images as they do to strangers, perhaps reflecting an intermediate stage of being able to distinguish oneself from others.
