March 19, 2016
Features
Feature
Stem cells and other components of fat can be coerced to grow into bone, cartilage, muscle or to repair the heart.
Feature
Car engines and batteries run because of the second law of thermodynamics, which appears to work, with just a little bending, for ultrasmall engines in the quantum realm as well.
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Editor's Note
In the latest issue of Science News, Editor in Chief Eva Emerson talks fat cells, thermodynamics, and lead poisoning.
Features
Car engines and batteries run because of the second law of thermodynamics, which appears to work, with just a little bending, for ultrasmall engines in the quantum realm as well.
Stem cells and other components of fat can be coerced to grow into bone, cartilage, muscle or to repair the heart.
News
Studies of vaginal ring for HIV protection show promise, challenges.
High-voltage power cables that ferry electricity across the seafloor do not negatively impact local fish and crabs, new studies show.
A nuclear reactor experiment in China is providing new hints that a fourth type of neutrino, one more than the standard model of physics allows, may exist.
A new carbon structure could store gases or liquids in honeycomb-shaped cells.
Amid controversy and conflicting studies, the FDA will test food for glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world.
Sharp-edged stone tools enabled daily survival, not warfare, on Easter Island.
R2d2 is selfish DNA that could skew scientists’ views of adaptation and evolution.
Scientists have known for decades that lead is toxic to the brain, but the mark lead exposure leaves on children may actually stretch into adulthood, and perhaps even future generations.
A roughly 520-million-year-old fossil preserved an ancient arthropod’s ventral nerve cord and peripheral nerves.
Newly settled corals use vitamin C to help build their stony skeletons, researchers propose.
Oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster could hasten the corrosion of historical shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico, new studies of marine microbes suggest.
Interbreeding between humans and Neandertals happened earlier than thought, leaving traces in the Neandertal genome.
Those gravity waves came from two black holes more massive than any known outside a galactic core and formed in an environment different than the Milky Way.
Notebook
Prepared as a snack by some groups in southern Africa, the stinkbug Encosternum delegorguei is a good source of protein and antioxidants.
A new species of chameleon from Tanzania echoes the unusual range of the kipunji monkey.
50 years have refined a basic understanding of the brain, but scientists are still exploring how memories form, change and persist.
A 747 outfitted with a telescope worked with New Horizons to reveal details about Pluto’s atmosphere.
For a split second, LIGO’s black hole collision generated 36 septillion yottawatts of power, or 50 times the power from all the stars in the universe.
Reviews & Previews
MorphoSource.org archives 3-D images of bones from over 200 genera of both living and extinct animals.
The Invention of Science offers readers an unconventional perspective on the origins of modern science.
Cure: A Journey Into the Science of Mind Over Body investigates the brain’s role in keeping people healthy.
Letters to the Editor
Stress, tattoos, cosmic origins and more reader feedback.
Science Visualized
The dinoflagellate Noctiluca scintillans is taking over in the Arabian Sea, posing a potential threat to its ecosystem.