Uncategorized
- Life
Caterpillar noise tricks ants into service
Sneaky interlopers mimic the “voice” of an ant queen to get royal treatment from the colony. (Audio included.)
- Health & Medicine
How the body rubs out West Nile virus
Tests in mice show how the immune system tracks down cells infected with West Nile virus, findings that might explain why some old people fare worst from the virus.
- Earth
Animal ancestors may have survived ‘snowball Earth’
Chemical fossils in Precambrian sedimentary rock push back the first date for animal life.
- Space
Early galaxy bulges in the middle
By tracing star birth in a galaxy that existed when the universe was less than 1 billion years old, researchers have captured what appears to be the formation of a key galactic component — a central concentration of stars known as the bulge.
- Life
Earliest whales gave birth on land
Recently discovered fossils of a protowhale help fill in gaps in the land-to-water transition.
- Space
Smallest known transiting planet discovered
Astronomers have found the smallest known extrasolar planets that is blocking light from its parent star. The discovery could help reveal information about the structure of planets that may resemble Earth.
- Health & Medicine
Needles can stick it to pain
Acupuncture lessens pain, but so do needles randomly stuck in the skin, a new analysis shows.
- Life
Nemo could get lost again as seawater approaches acidity
Reef fish raised at a seawater pH expected for the year 2100 don't smell their way around normally.
- Health & Medicine
Chocolate may have arrived early to U.S. Southwest
A new study suggests that people in America’s Southwest were making cacao beverages as early as A.D. 1000.
- Humans
When dreams come true
People see hidden truths in their dreams and use dreams to guide waking attitudes and behaviors, especially when dream content supports pre-existing beliefs, researchers say.
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Receding glaciers erase records of climate history
For three decades, Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University has been monitoring the health of glaciers atop mountains from Peru to China . Skeptics initially doubted that he could retrieve meaningful data from these remote elevations. But he has, while also discovering that these millennia-old data-storage lockers are rapidly disappearing. Senior Editor Janet Raloff recently […]
