News in Brief
- Animals
Olinguito’s bio built by crowd-sourcing
Crowd-sourcing fleshes out the bio of little-known raccoon relative, the olinguito.
- Health & Medicine
Elderly benefit from high-dose flu shot
High-dose vaccine may offer people age 65 and older improved protection against the flu.
- Neuroscience
Prosthesis uses swinging arms to tell legs when to step
Device creates artificial neural connection that could help paralyzed people walk.
- Oceans
Mercury at ocean surface may have tripled since preindustrial times
Questions remain over dangers of toxic metal in environment.
- Planetary Science
Saturn moon’s geysers draw water from subsurface sea
More than six years of Cassini data indicate that the water jets on the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus connect to deep-ocean reservoirs via expanding cracks in surface ice.
- Psychology
Goalkeepers deceive themselves when facing penalty kicks
Soccer’s goalies fall victim to a logical fallacy during the sport’s most high-pressure situation, seeing trends where none exists.
- Neuroscience
Study linking narcolepsy to autoimmunity retracted
Data linking disorder to immune cells couldn’t be replicated, scientists say.
- Environment
Recycled water may flood urban parks with dangerous germs
Irrigating city parks with recycled water may flood the soil with drug-resistant microbes.
- Tech
With two robotic fingers, humans get a helping hand
Mechanical fingers grasp like the real thing.
- Environment
Wild monkeys near Fukushima have low blood cell counts
Primates near the ill-fated nuclear power plant may have been affected by radiation.
- Planetary Science
Comet ISON fell apart earlier than realized
Comet ISON disintegrated at least eight hours before it grazed the surface of the sun last fall, new observations show.
- Climate
Cell phone towers monitor African rains
Scientists used cell phone towers to monitor African rains, a method that could track weather in regions without robust meteorological infrastructure.
