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19372
John Harris is quoted as saying that the absence of opossums is a “curious exception” to the list of current mammals of the Los Angeles Basin preserved in the La Brea tar pits. But the presence of opossums on the West Coast is well documented to be very recent. All current California opossums derive entirely […]
By Science News -
Reef Relations
The discovery of humanlike genes in coral means that the common ancestor of both humans and coral was more complex than previously assumed.
By John Travis - Health & Medicine
Viruses depend on shocking proteins
To replicate within a cell, a bird virus must force the cell to make certain proteins.
By John Travis - Health & Medicine
Drugs slow aging in worms
Drugs that defuse so-called free radicals lengthen a worm's life span by more than 50 percent.
By John Travis -
Whatever that is, it’s scary
Tammar wallabies that have lived away from mammalian predators for more than 9,000 years still seem to recognize the appearance of danger.
By Susan Milius -
Kookaburra sibling rivalry gets rough
The youngest kookaburra in the nest doesn't have a lot to laugh about.
By Susan Milius - Astronomy
Gang of four: Debut of a big telescope
In the desert of northern Chile, a fourth 8.2-meter telescope opened for business, completing a quartet known as the Very Large Telescope.
By Ron Cowen - Astronomy
Stellar motions provide hole-y data
Measuring for the first time the acceleration of stars near the dense core of our galaxy, astronomers have obtained more precise information on the location and density of the black hole that lurks there.
By Ron Cowen -
Human, Mouse, Rat . . . What’s Next?
Scientists lobby for a chimpanzee genome project.
By John Travis -
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19371
One of your sources in this article claims, “After all, even the sacred first law’s conservation of energy breaks down in the quantum realm, albeit in a limited way, he notes. That’s because Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle allows energy momentarily to appear from nothing, although it must be quickly paid back.” This claim is heard occasionally, […]
By Science News - Math
Global contest nets encryption standard
A data-scrambling scheme called Rijndael was selected to become the federal government's new formula for protecting sensitive, unclassified information.