News in Brief
- 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.
- Particle Physics
One particle’s trek suggests that ‘spacetime foam’ doesn’t slow neutrinos
Neutrinos and light travel at essentially the same speed, as predicted.
- Paleontology
This amber nugget from Myanmar holds the first known baby snake fossil
Amber preserves the delicate bone structure of a 99 million year old baby snake.
- Astronomy
Move over, Hubble. This sharp pic of Neptune was taken from Earth
A new strategy at the Very Large Telescope lets astronomers take space telescope–quality pictures from the ground.
- Computing
Solving problems by computer just got a lot faster
A new computer program sifts through all possible solutions to find the best answer to a given problem far faster than other algorithms.
