News
- 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.
- Health & Medicine
Primate virus found in zoo workers
Viruses related to HIV can be found in the blood of some zoo staff and other people who work with primates, although the infections don't appear to be harmful.
