Tech
‘Monsters’ examines a history of technological hubris
Drawing on the Hindenburg disaster, a science writer develops criteria for recognizing risky technology.
Reviews & Previews
Science Visualized
Planetary Science
New exoplanet: Big Earth or small Neptune?
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered a “cousin” of Earth 1,400 light-years away. But even though the new planet bears many similarities to Earth, experts say much about it remains a mystery.
Notebook
Neuroscience
Claim of memory transfer made 50 years ago
Scientist’s claims of transferred memories were more fiction than fact.
Features
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Rethinking which cells are the conductors of learning and memory
Brain cells called glia may be center stage when it comes to learning and memory, recent research suggests.
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Automated chemistry could build better drugs fast and cheap
Automated molecular synthesis may win over chemists who are not convinced that more technology in drug design is better.
More Stories from the August 22, 2015 issue
- Genetics
Mutation-disease link masked in zebrafish
Zebrafish study shows organisms can work around DNA mutations.
- Health & Medicine
Potential pain treatment’s mechanism deciphered
Scientists have new insight as to how a class of environment-sensing bone marrow cells can help safely relieve pain.
- Plants
Defense hormones guide plant roots’ mix of microbes
Plants use salicylic acid to attract some bacteria to roots and repel others.
- Physics
Elusive particle shows up in ‘semimetal’
Weyl fermions, which resemble massless electrons, have been spotted inside tantalum arsenide. Their discovery comes 86 years after they were proposed.
- Life
Good luck outsmarting a mosquito
Mosquitoes use their senses in sophisticated combinations and sequences to find you.
- Climate
Carbon dating may soon lead to mismatches
Carbon released from burning fossil fuels will jeopardize the effectiveness of many carbon dating applications, new research predicts.
- Health & Medicine
Death by brain-eating amoeba is an inside job
Immune response to brain-eating amoeba may be the real killer.
- Genetics
Research teams duel over Native American origins
Genetic link between Australia and the Amazon fuels two interpretations of Native American origins.
- Neuroscience
Boosting estrogen, only in the brain
Scientists have developed a chemical that transforms into the hormone estrogen in the brain, but not the body, of rats.
- Paleontology
Sudden heat spikes did in Ice Age’s mammoth mammals
Abrupt warming and excessive hunting by ancient humans were responsible for the disappearance of many large mammals, including woolly mammoths, during Earth’s last glacial period.
- Paleontology
Museum fossil links snakes to lizards
Scientists have discovered the fossilized remains of the first four-legged snake. The fossil bridges the gap between snakes and lizards.
- Astronomy
Kepler telescope identifies new ‘habitable zone’ planet
A new analysis of data from NASA’s Kepler mission has uncovered a planet orbiting a sunlike star that could be Earth’s “cousin.”
- Planetary Science
Ice flows, haze offer more clues to Pluto’s geology
New Horizons’ latest data reveal more hints about Pluto’s shrinking atmosphere and possible underground ocean.
- Life
Laser light made inside cells
Microscopic beads and oil droplets become lasers when implanted into cells.
- Life
Antibody that fights MERS found
Scientists have isolated a human immune protein that fights the MERS virus in mice.
- Planetary Science
New results from Philae lander offer first close-up of a comet
Philae’s bouncy journey across comet 67P allowed it to check out two very different sites before taking a detailed look at both the inside and outside of the comet.
- Materials Science
Stretchy fiber lets electrons flow
Folded layers of carbon nanotubes allow an elastic fiber to conduct electrical current when stretched.
- Animals
Stinkbugs are color conscious when it comes to their eggs
P. maculiventris moms control the color of their eggs, seemingly pairing darker eggs with darker surfaces.
- Animals
Boa suffocation is merely myth
Boa constrictors don’t suffocate prey; they block blood flow, says a new study that shatters a common myth about the snakes.
- Neuroscience
A voyage into Parkinson’s disease, led by patient and journalist
Jon Palfreman’s Brain Storms explores Parkinson’s disease in the past, present and future.
- Tech
Moving exhibit pays tribute to lost space shuttles’ crews
At Kennedy Space Center, pieces of wreckage from the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia are on public display for the first time.
