News
- Health & Medicine
Averting Pain: Epilepsy drug limits migraine attacks
A drug normally used against epilepsy can prevent migraine headaches.
- Paleontology
Old Colonies: Ancient formations are termites’ legacy
New analyses of mysterious pillars at two sites in southern Africa suggest that the sandstone features are petrified remains of large, elaborate termite nests.
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Song Sung Blue: In brain, music and language overlap
Different classical-music passages facilitate thinking about specific verbal categories, triggering brain responses previously seen only when people recognized related linguistic meanings.
- Animals
Fox Selection: Bottleneck survivors show surprising variety
Foxes native to a California island—famous for the least genetic diversity ever reported in a sexually reproducing animal—have some variation after all.
- Astronomy
Wrenching Findings: Homing in on dark energy
In an analysis of a group of distant supernovas, astronomers have found hints that dark energy is distributed uniformly throughout space.
- Math
Toss Out the Toss-Up: Bias in heads-or-tails
Coin tossing is inherently biased, with the coin more likely to land on the same face it started on.
- Materials Science
Hard Stuff: Cooked diamonds don’t dent
When exposed to high heat and pressure, single-crystal diamonds become extraordinarily hard.
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- Anthropology
Linguists in Siberia record dying tongues
Researchers trekking through remote Russian villages have identified and interviewed some of the last remaining speakers of two Turkic languages.
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Microbe exhibits out-of-body activity
New evidence indicates that anthrax bacteria may sometimes live freely and reproduce in soil, perhaps exchanging genes with other bacteria, instead of staying dormant in spores.
- Animals
Feral breed lacks domestic dogs’ skill
Wild dogs that haven't lived with people for 5,000 years share little of the capacity of their domesticated cousins for interpreting human gestures.
- Health & Medicine
HIV infects 1 in 100 in New York
A change in how New York City officials identify and track cases of HIV infection has yielded the clearest picture yet of how deeply rooted that city's epidemic has become.
