News in Brief
- Life
Here’s how fast cell death can strike
Scientists have measured how quickly the signal to commit form of cellular suicide called apoptosis travels.
- Astronomy
Hopes dim that gamma rays can reveal dark matter
A mysterious glow of gamma rays coming from the center of the Milky Way probably isn’t a sign of dark matter.
- Genetics
Indonesia’s pygmies didn’t descend from hobbits, DNA analysis suggests
Short people living on the Indonesian island of Flores don’t appear to have DNA from controversial, small-bodied Stone Age hominids called hobbits.
- Paleontology
Fossil teeth show how a mass extinction scrambled shark evolution
The dinosaur-destroying mass extinction event didn’t wipe out sharks, but it did change their fate.
- Animals
With one island’s losses, the king penguin species shrinks by a third
Once home to the largest known colony of king penguins, Île aux Cochons has lost most of its birds for unknown reason.
- Particle Physics
In a first, physicists accelerate atoms in the Large Hadron Collider
Ionized lead atoms took a spin around the world’s biggest particle accelerator.
- Neuroscience
Soccer headers may hurt women’s brains more than men’s
Women sustain more damage from heading soccer balls than men, a brain scan study suggests.
- Particle Physics
A new quasiparticle lurks in semiconductors
Strange entities called collexons hint at undiscovered physics among interacting subatomic particles in a semiconductor.
- Health & Medicine
What leech gut bacteria can tell us about drug resistance
A bacteria found in leeches becomes drug resistant after only a small exposure to common antibiotics.
- Paleontology
Paleontologists have ID’d the world’s biggest known dinosaur foot
Bigfoot has been found in Wyoming. It’s not a hairy, apelike creature; it’s a dinosaur.
- Health & Medicine
Pediatricians warn against chemical additives in food for kids
Common food additives found in meats, plastic packaging or metal cans may contain chemicals that harm children’s health.
- Earth
The giant iceberg that broke from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf is stuck
A year ago, an iceberg calved off of the Larsen C ice shelf. The hunk of ice hasn’t moved much since, and that has scientists keeping an eye on it.
