Uncategorized
- Animals
Cone snail deploys insulin to slow speedy prey
Fish-hunting cone snails turns insulin into a weapon that drops their prey’s blood sugar and eases capture.
- Life
Human evolution tied to a small fraction of the genome
Natural selection has concentrated on a small portion of the human genome, and mostly not on genes themselves.
- Physics
Speed of light not so constant after all
Even in vacuum conditions, light can move slower than its maximum speed depending on the structure of its pulses.
- Climate
2014 was Earth’s warmest year on record
Record-hot 2014 marks the 38th consecutive year of temperatures above the 20th century’s average.
- Tech
Using Facebook ‘likes,’ computer pegs people’s personalities
Using limited data from Facebook, computers can outdo humans in assessing a user’s openness, neuroticism and other personality traits.
- Earth
Faulty thermometers exaggerated western U.S. mountain warming
Defective thermometers used in snowpack and ecology research overstated warming in western U.S. mountains.
- Animals
Mountain migration is a roller coaster for bar-headed geese
Bar-headed geese rise and fall to match terrain below them when migrating over the Himalayas.
- Astronomy
Rocky planets around cool stars may have Earthlike climates
Small, rocky planets that sit close to cool stars might be able to keep spinning, creating conditions hospitable to life.
- Life
In battle to shape immunity, environment often beats genes
The environment, especially microbes, shapes immune system reactions more than genes do.
- Animals
Earth’s magnetic field guides sea turtles home
Over 19 years, geomagnetic fields changed slightly and so did loggerheads’ nesting sites.
- Archaeology
Ancient bone hand ax identified in China
People may have dug up roots with the 170,000-year-old bone tool, the first found in East Asia.
- Environment
More toxic chemicals found in oil and gas wastewater
High levels of ammonium and iodide found in wastewater from oil and gas exploration can harm aquatic life and form dangerous byproducts in tap water.
