News
- Tech
Thrifty trucks go with the flow
Forcing air through strategically placed slits on a tractor trailer results in a major boost in fuel economy.
- Earth
Early Warning: United States to deploy 32 more buoys for sensing tsunamis
On Jan. 14, the Bush administration announced a $37.5 million program to expand the nation's tsunami-warning capabilities.
- Tech
Micro Musclebot: Wee walker moves by heart cells’ beats
A new breed of mobile micromachine made of living heart tissue, gold, and silicon takes a step with each rhythmic contraction of its muscle cells.
- Materials Science
Infrared Vision: New material may enhance plastic solar cells
The vision of flexible, low-cost, lightweight plastic solar cells has moved one step closer to reality with the creation of a material that can harness infrared light.
- Ecosystems
Bivalve Takeover: Once-benign clams boom after crab influx
European green crabs invading a California bay have triggered a population explosion of a previously marginal clam.
- Astronomy
Black Hole Bonanza: 10,000 objects near our galaxy’s center
Astronomers have found the first evidence of a suspected population of black holes near the Milky Way's center, each hole with 10 times the mass of the sun.
- Paleontology
Pieces of an Ancestor: African site yields new look at ancient species
Fossils unearthed at sites in eastern Africa provide a rare look at Ardipithecus ramidus, a member of the human evolutionary family that lived more than 4 million years ago.
- Planetary Science
A World Unveiled: Crème brûlée on Titan
Penetrating the orange haze of a frigid, alien world, a space probe parachuted onto Saturn's moon Titan and unexpectedly came face-to-face with terrain that looks a lot like Earth.
- Astronomy
Stars in the dust
The dusty disks surrounding three nearby stars show that they played host to massive collisions between asteroid-like objects as recently as 100 years ago.
- Astronomy
Zooming in on a great void
New X-ray observations provide the most detailed view yet of the environment near a supermassive black hole.
- Materials Science
Magnetic nanorods on cruise control
Chemists have created miniature engines out of nanoscale metallic rods that propel themselves using chemical energy.
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Whalebones show damage from diving
Long-lived sperm whales typically develop bone damage not previously observed in marine mammals but found in some human divers who surface quickly or dive frequently.
