News
- Astronomy
First Supper: X rays may mark eating habits of baby black holes
Astronomers have evidence that just minutes after their tumultuous birth, baby black holes emit powerful burps of X rays that may be fueled by material left over from their first meal.
- Physics
Warm Ice: Frozen water forms at room temperature
Ultrathin films of ice observed at room temperature and ordinary atmospheric pressure should be more widespread than previously thought, according to new experiments indicating that weaker-than-expected electric fields induce such freezing.
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Turning Back Time: Embryonic stem cell rejuvenates skin cell
By fusing an embryonic stem cell with an adult skin cell, researchers have created cells that retain valuable embryonic characteristics but carry the adult cell's genes.
- Animals
Hey, kids, it’s time for drool
A researcher has for the first time decoded a vibrational signal used by paper wasps.
- Animals
When a chipmunk teases a rattlesnake
Several of the Northeast's least ferocious forest creatures taunt rattlesnakes.
- Animals
Faithful voles have hidden infidelities
Prairie voles, used for studying the biological basis of monogamy, do form social bonds but they also have more out-of-pair sexual encounters than most biologists had expected.
- Animals
Coati version of spoiled brats
A biologist reports that ring-tailed coatis in Argentina have a kind of dominance structure never before documented in animals, with adolescents as a group outranking their moms and older half-sibs.
- Planetary Science
Radar for rovers on future Mars trips?
Scientists are developing ground-penetrating radar equipment that could serve as geologists' helpers on future Mars-roving vehicles.
- Earth
Spores record changes in ozone concentration
Decreasing concentrations of atmospheric ozone over Antarctica have triggered changes in the spores of a plant that grows in the region, a trend that could give scientists insight into ancient extinctions.
- Planetary Science
Enceladus: Small but feisty
Close-up observations of Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus reveal that its south pole is hotter than its equator and that the icy satellite continues to undergo eruptions.
- Health & Medicine
Stroke site is often not right
Thousands of strokes in the right half of the brain may go unrecognized because their symptoms are less distinctive than those of left-side strokes.
- Animals
Getting the Gull: Baiting trick spreads among killer whales
A young male orca that spits up fish and then ambushes gulls attracted to the mess seems to have started a wave of cultural transmission.
