All Stories by Susan Milius
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Migration may reawaken Lyme disease
Lyme disease can hide in healthy-looking birds until the stress of migration drives it into a potentially infectious state.
- Ecosystems
Tougher Weeds? Borrowed gene helps wild sunflower
Feeding concerns about developing superweeds, a test of sunflowers shows for the first time that a biologically engineered gene moving from a crop can give an advantage to wild relatives under naturalistic conditions.
- Humans
R&D budget should ease biomed envy
President Clinton's science budget for 2001 proposes to narrow a gap that's yawned in recent years between lusher funding for biomedicine and leaner support for the physical sciences.
- Earth
Just how much do U.S. roads matter?
A Harvard researcher calculates that roads directly influence the ecology of a fifth of U.S. land area.
- Ecosystems
Males live longer with all-year mating
Male butterflies live longer in Madeira, where females are available year-round, than in Sweden, where females mature in one burst.
- Plants
Why tulips can’t dance
An elliptical stem gives daffodils an unusual liveliness in the wind compared with tulips.
- Animals
When Ants Squeak
In the past 20 years, researchers studying sound communication in ants have discovered a sort of ant-ernet, zinging with messages about lost relatives, great food, free rides for hitchhikers, caterpillars in search of ant partners, and impending doom.
- Animals
Bees log flight distances, train with maps
After decades of work, scientists crack two problems of how bees navigate: reading bee odometers and mapping training flights.
- Ecosystems
Pfiesteria’s Bite: Microbe may kill fish by skinning, not poisoning
At least one kind of Pfiesteria—accused of killing fish and threatening human health—does not produce a toxin but kills by eating holes in fish's skin, some researchers say.
- Plants
Recent tree scourge poses garden threat
Lab tests suggest that a lethal disease of oak trees in California and Oregon could strike some popular garden shrubs in the rhododendron family.
- Plants
Disease outpacing control in largest chestnut patch left
An unusual test of a biological control for the blight that's killing American chestnuts doesn't look good in the largest remaining patch.
- Animals
Hyena androgens exact high cost
Blocking androgens for spotted hyenas before they're born shows that the exposure of a female fetus to male hormones normally takes a heavy physical toll when females bear their own pups.
