Life
‘Wild Ways’ showcases need for wildlife corridors
The TV documentary 'Wild Ways' shows how wildlife corridors bridge the gap between isolated populations of animals.
Reviews & Previews
Science Visualized
Astronomy
The moon’s poles have no fixed address
Ancient deposits of lunar water ice mark where the moon’s poles used to be.
Notebook
Planetary Science
Mercury’s dark secret revealed
Graphite from Mercury’s primordial crust might be responsible for making the innermost planet darker than the moon.
Features
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Changing climate: 10 years after ‘An Inconvenient Truth’
In the 10 years since "An Inconvenient Truth," climate researchers have made progress in predicting how rising temperatures will affect sea level, weather patterns and polar ice.
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Gum disease opens up the body to a host of infections
Researchers are getting to the root of gum disease's implications for other diseases.
More Stories from the April 16, 2016 issue
- Plants
How to keep seagrasses as happy as a clam
Drought can do more damage to seagrass meadows if their partnership with clams break down.
- Materials Science
New process encourages ice to slip, slide away
Researchers discover new process for making durable ice-phobic materials.
- Paleontology
New tyrannosaur bridges gap from medium to monstrous
Horse-sized Timurlengia euotica had a brain and ears like its bigger relative Tyrannosaurus rex, which lived millions of years later.
- Ecosystems
Australian fairy circles first to be found outside Africa
Strange patterns of grassland bald spots called fairy circles show up in Western Australia.
- Materials Science
Playing with building blocks for metamaterial design
Legos show promise as a low-cost method to assist scientists in developing novel metamaterials.
- Neuroscience
Lost memories retrieved for mice with signs of Alzheimer’s
Using light, scientists coaxed a forgotten memory from the brains of mice with Alzheimer’s-like symptoms.
- Physics
Like birds of a feather, sperm flock together
Studies of sperm show that they swim in groups because of the elasticity of the mucus they travel through.
- Paleontology
How to tell if a T. rex is expecting
A “pregnancy” test for tyrannosaurs relies on chemical analyses of medullary bone, a reproductive tissue found in female birds.
- Earth
CO2 shakes up theory of how geysers spout
Carbon dioxide helps fuel eruptions of Spouter Geyser, and perhaps other features, in Yellowstone National Park, new research suggests.
- Math
Mathematicians find a peculiar pattern in primes
Consecutive prime numbers don’t behave as randomly as mathematicians assumed.
- Physics
New type of catalyst could aid hydrogen fuel
A substance that can switch states might make an efficient catalyst for extracting hydrogen from water.
- Animals
Piggybacking tadpoles are epic food beggars
Tadpoles beg so frantically among mimic poison frogs that researchers check to see whether they’re just scamming.
- Animals
It’s an herbivore-kill-herbivore world
Female prairie dogs killing babies of another species might keep competitors off the grass.
- Genetics
Scientists build minimum-genome bacterium
Minimal genome organism reveals how much scientists don’t know about biology.
- Genetics
Zika may have flown to Brazil in 2013
The brand of Zika currently floating around the Americas traces its origins to Asia and may have arrived in Brazil by air as early as 2013.
- Health & Medicine
Environment still tied to MS risk
50 years ago, scientists reported a possible connection between the environment and multiple sclerosis risk.
- Environment
Dome effect leaves Chinese megacities under thick haze
Airborne black carbon lowers an atmospheric boundary, trapping pollution around major cities and worsening air quality, researchers propose.
- Microbes
This microbe makes a meal of plastic
A newly identified bacterium can break down plastic waste.
- Paleontology
Disney’s ‘The Jungle Book’ resurrects giant extinct ape
Disney’s latest version of ‘The Jungle Book’ features Gigantopithecus, the largest known ape ever to have lived.
- Astronomy
There’s far more to the galaxy than meets the eye
A new map of the galaxy as seen in submillimeter light reveals intricate details from nearby nebulas to the far-flung galactic center.
- Agriculture
Climate change threatens quality of French, Swiss wines
Wine quality could suffer as climate change desynchronizes warm temperatures and droughts, preventing grape growers from harvesting at the optimum time.
