News in Brief
- Anthropology
Hominids may have hunted rabbits as far back as 400,000 years ago
Stone Age groups in Europe put small game on the menu surprisingly early.
- Oceans
Tiny bits of iron may explain why some icebergs are green
Scientists originally thought the green hue of some icebergs came from carbon particles. Instead, iron oxides may color the ice.
- Life
This spider slingshots itself at extreme speeds to catch prey
By winding up its web like a slingshot, the slingshot spider achieves an acceleration rate far faster than a cheetah’s.
- Astronomy
The first planet Kepler spotted has finally been confirmed 10 years later
Astronomers had dismissed the first exoplanet candidate spotted by the Kepler space telescope as a false alarm.
- Health & Medicine
Watching hours of TV is tied to verbal memory decline in older people
The more television people age 50 and up watched, the worse they recalled a list of words in tests years later, a study finds.
- Archaeology
Ancient Angkor’s mysterious decline may have been slow, not sudden
Analyzing sediment from the massive city’s moat challenges the idea that the last capital of the Khmer Empire collapsed suddenly.
- Physics
Supernovas show the universe expands at the same rate in all directions
Analyzing supernovas indicates that expansion rates agree within 1 percent across large regions of sky.
- Planetary Science
Neptune’s smallest moon may be a chip off another moon
Neptune’s tiniest moon probably formed when a comet hit a larger moon.
- Neuroscience
Brain cells combine place and taste to make food maps
A select group of brain cells responds to both flavor and location, a specialty that may help an animal find the next good meal.
- Archaeology
Tooth plaque shows drinking milk goes back 3,000 years in Mongolia
The hardened plaque on teeth is helping scientists trace the history of dairying in Mongolia.
- Tech
A new 2-D material uses light to quickly and safely purify water
A newly designed material uses only light to speedily remove 99.9999 percent of microbes from water.
- Earth
Greenland may have another massive crater hiding under its ice
There may be yet another large crater buried beneath Greenland’s ice sheet. But it’s probably not related to the first one found last year.
