Notebook
- Animals
Coconut crab pinches like a lion, eats like a dumpster diver
Coconut crabs use their surprisingly powerful claw for more than cracking coconuts.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Animals
Coral reef crab named after Harry Potter characters
Bizarre rubble-dwelling crab named after critter collector and Harry Potter characters.
- Materials Science
Germanium computer chips gain ground on silicon — again
Having pushed silicon to its limit, engineers are turning back to germanium.
- 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.
- 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.
- Animals
For calmer chickens, bathe eggs in light
Shining light on incubating eggs leads to calmer adult chickens, a study suggests.
- 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.
- Animals
Dragonfish opens wide with flex neck joint
New study reveals anatomical secrets of mysterious deep ocean fish.
- 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.
