News
- Earth
Sensing a vibe
A sprawling network of seismometers that covers the Los Angeles area could be adapted to provide warning of damaging ground motions from earthquakes in the seconds before those seismic vibes arrive.
- Physics
Crystal Bash: Shocking changes to light’s properties
Prized, light-manipulating microstructures known as photonic crystals may transform light in new and technologically tantalizing ways when jolted by shock waves.
- Anthropology
Ancestral Bushwhack: Hominid tree gets trimmed twice
In separate presentations at scientific meetings, two anthropologists challenged the influential view that the human evolutionary family has contained as many as 20 different fossil species.
-
Do people flirt like guppies?
Researchers who have studied how female guppies copy other females' choice of mate are tackling the same question in Homo sapiens.
-
Beaks change songs in Darwin’s finches
A new look—and listen—at Darwin's finches finds that the famous relationship between beak size and food supply affects their courtship songs as well.
-
Puppy tests flunk long-term checkups
A follow-up study of dog-personality tests suggests that they don't have the predictive power many puppy purchasers expect.
-
Looking for a mate? Oh, whatever
Two cricket species don't seem to care whether they get mixed up at mating time, an oddity that may have something to do with the female's need to dine on leftover sperm.
-
Social tuco-tucos develop more variety
In mustachioed rodents called tuco-tucos, group life seems to have fostered more diverse immune systems than has solitary living.
-
She salamanders punish fickle mates
Female salamanders get aggressive if the male they share a rock with wanders back after an interlude with another female.
- Materials Science
Apollo attire needs care
Advanced spacesuits protected astronauts far from Earth just 30 years ago, but the materials have already deteriorated.
-
Tales from the crypts: Cells battle germs
Inhabiting tiny pits in the small intestine, so-called Paneth cells defend other cells in these crypts by discharging bacteria-killing bursts of enzymes and other molecules.
- Health & Medicine
Do more infections mean less asthma?
Young infants kept out of day care and having no more than one older sibling are significantly more likely to develop asthma than are babies who have greater exposure to other children.
