All Stories by Science News Staff

  1. Astronomy

    “Black holes” in space

    Science News Letter was the first publication to use the term in print in 1964.

  2. Animals

    Flightless birds face extinction

    New Zealand’s flightless birds have limped through the last few decades, but conservation efforts have had some success.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Distractions raise crash risk for newly licensed drivers

    The risk of a crash or near-crash for newly licensed drivers is tripled or greater when they are eating, texting or rubbernecking, researchers report.

  4. Tech

    Reader favorites of 2013

    For this issue, the editors selected the 25 most important and intriguing science stories of the year. But online readers seemed to point to a different bunch, showing just how subjective such an exercise can be.

  5. Animals

    Unusual new species names of 2013

    Here are five species with tongue-twister titles.

  6. Life

    Feedback

    Readers discuss dog origins and how important a sense of scale is in science journalism.

  7. Microbes

    MRSA strain swiped skin bacteria genes to survive

    A common strain of the dangerous microbe may be a wolf in sheep's clothing.

  8. Science & Society

    Feedback

    Science policy and sleep get a deeper review.

  9. Environment

    World’s worst polluted

    A new report by Green Cross Switzerland and the Blacksmith Institute lists places posing the greatest risk to human health.

  10. Astronomy

    Comet ISON was punier than previously thought

    The ice ball was probably no wider than New York’s Central Park.

  11. Computing

    Fastest supercomputers

    The new list of the world’s fastest computers, now in its 20th year, has China’s Tianhe-2 on top with a processing speed of 33.9 petaflops — or quadrillions of calculations per second.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Cancer vaccine in near future foreseen

    Excerpt from the December 21, 1963 issue of SCIENCE NEWS LETTER.