News in Brief
- Tech
Watch this cuttlefish-inspired ‘skin’ morph into a 3-D shape
New silicone material mimics cephalopod shape-shifting for quick camouflage.
- Neuroscience
There’s no rest for the brain’s mapmakers
Navigational grid cells stay on the job during sleep.
- Health & Medicine
In many places around the world, obesity in kids is on the rise
The last 40 years saw a big leap in obesity among children, totaling an estimated 124 million boys and girls in 2016.
- Genetics
We’re more Neandertal than we thought
Neandertals contributed more to human traits than previously thought.
- Archaeology
Europe’s Stone Age fishers used beeswax to make a point
Late Stone Age Europeans made spears with beeswax adhesive.
- Paleontology
A baby ichthyosaur’s last meal revealed
A new look at an old fossil shows that some species of baby ichthyosaurs may have dined on squid.
- Environment
Radioactive material from Fukushima disaster turns up in a surprising place
Radioactive cesium is reaching the ocean through salty groundwater.
- Oceans
Castaway critters rafted to U.S. shores aboard Japan tsunami debris
Researchers report finding 289 living Japanese marine species that washed up on American shores on debris from the 2011 East Japan earthquake and tsunami.
- 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.
