Uncategorized
- Astronomy
What’s in a name? In science, a lot
Classification systems are essential to science. But any classification system, however useful, is ultimately simplistic.
By Eva Emerson - Environment
Manganese turns honeybees into bumbling foragers
Ingesting low doses of the heavy metal manganese disrupts honeybee foraging, a new experiment suggests.
- Health & Medicine
Clean-up gene gone awry can cause Lou Gehrig’s disease
Scientists have linked mutations on a gene involved in inflammation and cell cleanup to ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
- Animals
Neandertal of ant farmers grows modern food
The most old-fashioned fungus-growing ant yet discovered grows a startlingly new-fangled crop.
By Susan Milius - Astronomy
Unlikely nursery for new planets is next to massive black hole
Planet nurseries encircle young stars within a few light-years of the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way, scientists claim.
- Anthropology
How to reconstruct the face of an extinct human ancestor
3-D designer reconstructs portraits of ancestors for the human family album.
By Erin Wayman - Humans
The expressive face of human history on display
Busts on display in an Italian exhibit flesh out hominid skulls using the latest in 3-D reconstruction.
By Sean Treacy - Paleontology
Fossil of monstrous fish-eating amphibian unearthed
A new Triassic species of giant amphibian lived like a crocodile instead of like its cute little salamander and frog relatives of today.
By Susan Milius - Planetary Science
Earth, neighbors weren’t the first rocky planets in the solar system
Jupiter might have swept an earlier generation of rocky planets into the sun, leaving room for Earth and its neighbors to form.
- Archaeology
Telling stories from stone tools
Existing stone tool categories may hide more than they reveal. New methods for analyzing stone artifacts aim to better reconstruct how hominids interacted and moved across Africa, Asia and Europe.
By Bruce Bower - Animals
Piggyback rides and other crocodile fun
We don’t know the playful side of crocodiles perhaps only because we haven’t looked.
By Susan Milius - Quantum Physics
Quantum links provide clues to causation
Quantum entanglement enables physicists to determine cause and effect just by tracking the association between two measurements.
By Andrew Grant