All Stories by Rachel Ehrenberg
- Earth
For coots, hatching order is crucial ID
When birds sneak eggs into others' nest, mom and dad can learn to find their own.
- Chemistry
Batteries made from nanotubes … and paper
Scientists have made batteries and supercapacitors with little more than ordinary office paper and some carbon and silver nanomaterials.
- Life
Poached hammerhead fins traced to endangered populations
Mapping populations with DNA comparisons offers possible tool for conservation of hammerhead sharks.
- Chemistry
Metal gives pigment the blues
Researchers studying manganese oxides unexpectedly discover a new way to achieve blue hue.
- Earth
Where humans go, pepper virus follows
Plant pathogen could help track waters polluted with human waste.
- Life
Hormones give lantern sharks the glow
In a first, a study shows that bioluminescence can be controlled by slow-acting hormones, not rapid-fire nerve cells.
- Earth
Unicorn fly of the Cretaceous
An ancient fly discovered trapped in amber sports a horn atop its head and topped with three eyes.
- Health & Medicine
Redefining self, phantom self
Amputees who feel phantom limbs can learn to do physically impossible body tricks
- Chemistry
Tongue’s sour-sensing cells taste carbonation
A protein splits carbon dioxide to give fizz its unique flavor.
- Life
Paralyzed, then unparalyzed, by the light
Different types of light freeze and then reinvigorate roundworms fed a shape-changing molecule.
- Chemistry
Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded for ribosome research
Ada Yonath, Thomas Steitz and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan will share the prize for unmasking the structure of the ribosome.
- Chemistry
Flowerless plants make fancy amber
A new analysis suggests that ancient seed plants made a version of the fossilized resin credited to more modern relatives
