Uncategorized
- Climate
Crop nutrients may drop as carbon dioxide rises
Many staple grains and legumes pack 5 to 10 percent less iron, zinc and protein when grown at carbon dioxide levels expected midcentury.
- Animals
Woodpecker beaks divulge shock-absorbing properties
Scales, sutures and porosity help the birds hammer without going stupid.
- Math
The Improbability Principle
The laws of mathematics and physics suffice to explain a world of coincidences, statistician David J. Hand argues.
- Health & Medicine
U.S. patient with MERS virus is on the mend
A man in Indiana does not seem to have spread the potentially deadly respiratory illness.
- Health & Medicine
Massachusetts insurance mandate lowers death rate
Since “Romneycare” was phased in, mortality fell by 2.9 percent.
- Neuroscience
Young blood proven good for old brain
Blood — or one of its protein components — restores some of youth’s vibrancy to elderly mouse brains.
- Health & Medicine
MERS outbreak picks up pace in Middle East
As the number of MERS cases increases, researchers race to learn more about the deadly virus carried by camels.
- Cosmology
See the sky in a different light
An interactive map lets you explore the galaxy with infrared light.
- Animals
Narwhal has the strangest tooth in the sea
Sometimes called the unicorn of the sea, the male narwhal’s tusk is actually a tooth. Narwhals detect changes in water salinity using only these tusks, a new study finds.
- Physics
Gravity’s Ghost and Big Dog
Sociologist Harry Collins chronicles the occasionally heated (and often arcane) debates among scientists studying gravitational waves.
- Astronomy
Illuminating a dark universe
The film "Dark Universe" compresses a century of discovery into a crisp, comprehensible half hour.
- Animals
How to milk a naked mole-rat
For the sake of science, Olav Oftedal has milked bats, bears and a lot of other mammals. But a naked mole-rat was something new.
