Notebook

  1. Animals

    Pectoral sandpipers go the distance, and then some

    Even after a long migration, male pectoral sandpipers keep flying, adding 3,000 extra kilometers on quest for mates.

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  2. Animals

    For calmer chickens, bathe eggs in light

    Shining light on incubating eggs leads to calmer adult chickens, a study suggests.

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  3. Paleontology

    Pinhead-sized sea creature was a bag with a mouth

    Dozens of tiny fossils discovered in 540-million-year-old limestone represent the earliest known deuterostomes, a diverse group of animals that includes humans and sea cucumbers.

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  4. Animals

    Dragonfish opens wide with flex neck joint

    New study reveals anatomical secrets of mysterious deep ocean fish.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    50 years ago, methadone made a rosy debut

    Heralded as the “answer to heroin addiction,” methadone is still used to treat opiate addiction, despite risks.

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  6. Environment

    Humans’ stuff vastly outweighs humans

    The human-made technosphere weighs 30 trillion tons and surpasses the natural biosphere in mass and diversity, researchers estimate.

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  7. Paleontology

    Baby dinosaurs took three to six months to hatch

    Growth lines on teeth indicate a surprisingly long incubation period.

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  8. Planetary Science

    Weird wave found in Venus’ wind-whipped atmosphere

    A 10,000-kilometer-long gravity wave arched across the upper atmosphere of Venus. The feature may have been the largest of its kind in the solar system.

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  9. Plants

    Meat-eating pitcher plants raise deathtraps to an art

    The carnivorous California pitcher plant ensnares its dinner using a medley of techniques.

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  10. Paleontology

    Tomatillo fossil is oldest nightshade plant

    Two 52-million-year-old tomatillo fossils in Patagonia push the origin of nightshade plants back millions of years, to the time when dinosaurs roamed.

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  11. Astronomy

    Saturn’s 10th moon was the first satellite discovered in the modern space age

    Fifty years ago, astronomers knew of 10 moons orbiting Saturn. Since then they’ve catalogued a diverse set of 62 satellites, with the help of the Cassini spacecraft.

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  12. Animals

    These acorn worms have a head for swimming

    The larvae of one type of acorn worm are basically “swimming heads,” according to new genetic analyses.

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