News in Brief
- Earth
Plate tectonics started at least 3.5 billion years ago
Analyses of titanium in rock suggest plate tectonics began 500 million years earlier than thought.
- Health & Medicine
Microbes hobble a widely used chemo drug
Bacteria associated with cancer cells can inactivate a chemotherapy drug.
- Tech
In these bot hookups, the machines meld their minds
A new type of robot can team up with its fellows to form a single-minded machine.
- Animals
Why bats crash into windows
Smooth, vertical surfaces may be blind spots for bats and cause some animals to face-plant, study suggests.
- Particle Physics
Dark matter still remains elusive
Scientists continue the search for particles that make up the universe’s missing matter.
- Archaeology
People may have lived in Brazil more than 20,000 years ago
Stone Age humans left behind clues of their presence at a remote Brazilian rock shelter.
- Astronomy
Star that exploded in 1437 tracked to its current position
Astronomers have hunted down a star seen exploding in the year 1437 and traced it since, offering clues to the stages of a white dwarf.
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- Genetics
Gene editing creates virus-free piglets
Pigs engineered to lack infectious viruses may one day produce transplant organs.
- Particle Physics
Neutrino experiment may hint at why matter rules the universe
T2K experiment hints at an explanation for what happened to antimatter.
- Plants
A new portrait of the world’s first flower is unveiled
A reconstruction of the first flowers suggests the ancient blooms were bisexual.
- Materials Science
Diamond joins the realm of 2-D thin films, study suggests
Scientists squeezed graphene sheets into diamondene.
