Notebook
- 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.
- 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.
- Paleontology
Baby dinosaurs took three to six months to hatch
Growth lines on teeth indicate a surprisingly long incubation period.
- 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.
- Plants
Meat-eating pitcher plants raise deathtraps to an art
The carnivorous California pitcher plant ensnares its dinner using a medley of techniques.
