Notebook

  1. Agriculture

    Fleets of drones could pollinate future crops

    Chemist Eijiro Miyako turned a lab failure into a way to rethink artificial pollination.

    By Elizabeth Eaton
  2. Life

    Origin of photosynthesis may go further back than estimates from 50 years ago

    Analyzing ancient rocks has helped push back the date when photosynthetic organisms first emerged by nearly a billion years.

    By Laurel Hamers
  3. Health & Medicine

    Colorectal cancer is on the rise among younger adults

    Colorectal cancer rates in the United States have increased in people younger than 50.

    By Tina Hesman Saey
  4. Astronomy

    Black hole enjoys fantastically long stellar feast

    A supermassive black hole about 1.8 billion light-years away has been gorging on the same star for a record-breaking decade.

    By Ashley Yeager
  5. Animals

    Too many stinkbugs spoil the wine

    Stinkbugs can ruin wine if enough are accidentally processed alive with the grapes. Three or fewer stinkbugs per grape cluster don’t have a noticeable effect on red wine.

    By Elizabeth Eaton
  6. Animals

    Coconut crab pinches like a lion, eats like a dumpster diver

    Coconut crabs use their surprisingly powerful claw for more than cracking coconuts.

    By Susan Milius
  7. Computing

    Speech recognition has come a long way in 50 years

    Early versions of computer speech recognition relied on word sounds. Now, they add pattern recognition and a lot of statistics.

    By Bethany Brookshire
  8. Health & Medicine

    For Ebola patients, a few signs mean treatment’s needed — stat

    A few criteria may help identify Ebola patients who need the most care.

    By Tina Hesman Saey
  9. Physics

    Sound waves could take a tsunami down a few notches

    A tsunami’s ferocious force could be taken down a few notches with a pair of counter waves.

    By Emily Conover
  10. Animals

    Coral reef crab named after Harry Potter characters

    Bizarre rubble-dwelling crab named after critter collector and Harry Potter characters.

    By Helen Thompson
  11. Materials Science

    Germanium computer chips gain ground on silicon — again

    Having pushed silicon to its limit, engineers are turning back to germanium.

    By Cassie Martin
  12. Health & Medicine

    Weekend warriors put up a fight against death

    Weekend warriors shove all their weekly activity into just one or two days, and it’s still enough to reduce mortality risk.

    By Bethany Brookshire