In the Dec. 10 SN: Star-starved galaxies, animal math, Parkinson’s roots in the gut, supersolid success, Celebrex’s controversial heart risk, a prionlike memory protein, yo-yo dieting’s downside, blue begonias and more.

December 10, 2016

MATTHEW JACOBS

Archives

Feature

Star-starved galaxies fill the cosmos

Astronomers are detecting hundreds of galaxies that are almost devoid of stars. There are at least four theories on how they got that way.

8 months ago

Astronomy,
Cosmology
Feature

Animals give clues to the origins of human number crunching

Guppies, dogs, chickens, crows, spiders — lots of animals have number sense without knowing numbers.

8 months ago

Animals,
Evolution,
Neuroscience,
Numbers
News

Popular painkiller doesn’t have more heart risks than others, study claims

A long anticipated trial of the drug Celebrex finds it poses no more risk to the heart than do similar painkillers, but critics cite flaws in the study.

9 months ago

Clinical Trials,
Health
News in Brief

Ocean plastic emits chemical that may trick seabirds into eating trash

Some seabirds might be eating plastic because it emits a chemical that smells like food.

9 months ago

Pollution,
Oceans
News

British red squirrels serve as leprosy reservoir

Red squirrels in the British Isles can harbor the bacteria that cause leprosy.

9 months ago

Immune Science,
Ecology
News

Supersolids produced in exotic state of quantum matter

Bose-Einstein condensates display properties of liquid and solid simultaneously.

9 months ago

Condensed Matter,
Physics
News

Protein mobs kill cells that most need those proteins to survive

A protein engineered to aggregate gives clues about how clumpy proteins kill brain cells.

9 months ago

Cells,
Neuroscience
News in Brief

Most illegal ivory is less than three years old

Most of the ivory seized by law enforcement in the last decade doesn’t come from elephants poached many years ago.

9 months ago

Animals,
Conservation
How Bizarre

Mount St. Helens is a cold-hearted volcano

Geophysics reveals that deep beneath Mount St. Helens, there’s no source of hot magma, just a wedge of cold serpentinite rock. Where is the missing heat?

9 months ago

Earth
Science Visualized

Plant-eating mammals sport bigger bellies than meat eaters

Mammalian plant eaters have bigger torsos than meat eaters, a new analysis confirms, but the same might not have held true for dinosaurs.

8 months ago

Animals,
Evolution