News

Anthropology

Anklebone kicks up primate debate

The discoverers of a roughly 40-million-year-old anklebone in Myanmar say that it supports the controversial theory that anthropoids, a primate group that includes monkeys, apes, and humans, originated in Asia.

Health & Medicine

Acid blockers stop stomach ulcers, too

People who get ulcers from frequent use of anti-inflammatory painkillers can lessen their risk by simultaneously taking acid-blocking drugs.

Earth

Toxic cleanups get a boost

Researchers have developed and field-tested a new technique that identifies specific soil microbes that can break down environmental pollutants.

Ecosystems

Will Climate Change Depose Monarchs? Model predicts too-wet winter refuges

A computer analysis suggests that eastern monarch butterflies may not be able to tolerate the increasingly moist climate in Mexico, their current wintering site.

Earth

Not Just Neurotoxic: Pesticide chlorpyrifos affects heart and liver cells

A pesticide known to be toxic to the brain may also have subtle effects on heart and liver tissues of animals exposed to this substance during early development.

Tech

Plastic Memories: Polymer materials store data permanently

Researchers have fabricated a memory device that stores data permanently in electrically-conducting polymers.

Physics

Humpty-Dumpty Effect: Acoustically, people resemble large eggs

The first measurements of how people intrinsically scatter sound waves indicate that, acoustically, a human body resembles a hard ellipsoid of the same height and girth as the person.

Paleontology

Northern Extinction: Alaskan horses shrank, then disappeared

Horses that lived in Alaska shrank dramatically in body size before they went extinct at the end of the last ice age.

Astronomy

Sound of the fury

On Oct. 28, the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft recorded the radio wave "sound" of a powerful solar flare as it raced toward Earth.

Astronomy

Chow Down! Milky Way gobbles its closest known neighbor

A tiny, newly discovered galaxy being shredded by the gravity of the Milky Way is our galaxy's closest known neighbor, residing just 42,000 light-years from the Milky Way's center.