Uncategorized
- Microbes
Horsetail spores don’t need legs to jump
Forget legs. A plant uses curly, humidity-controlled ribbons to make epic leaps.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Avoiding feces may be ‘luxury’ wild mice can’t afford
For a mouse in the woods, finding any food at all may trump poopy locations.
By Susan Milius - Health & Medicine
Fructose may be key to weight gain
Mice that could not make or metabolize the sugar gained less weight than normal mice.
By Nathan Seppa - Chemistry
Meteorite that fell last year contains surprising molecules
Compounds in space rocks like the one that broke up over California may have helped seed life on Earth.
By Andrew Grant - Math
Egypt wasn’t built in a day, but it did rise quickly
New timeline of ancient civilization’s earliest days finds little time between earliest villages and dominant centralized state.
By Andrew Grant - Humans
Babies perk up to sounds of ancient hazards
Evolution has primed infants to focus on noises linked to longstanding dangers, a new study finds.
By Bruce Bower - Tech
Letters to the editor
Readers respond to glowing plants, fracking worries and space hookups.
By Science News - Environment
Grain alcohol in gasoline?
An excerpt from the September 21, 1963, issue of Science News Letter.
By Science News - Science & Society
The Nazi and the Psychiatrist
Hermann Goring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII by Jack El-Hai.
By Meghan Rosen - Psychology
Behind the Shock Machine
The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments by Gina Perry.
- Earth
World’s largest volcano lurks beneath Pacific Ocean
The dormant behemoth may rival ones on Mars.
- Life
Many genes in dolphins and bats evolved in the same way to allow echolocation
Widespread changes scattered across the genomes of distantly related species cooperated to craft the trait.