News
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Over there! Eat them instead!
An ant will ignore a single golden egg bug and attack a mating pair, a choice that may explain why singles hang around pairs.
By Susan Milius -
Bacteria make locust-swarm signal
A pheromone that helps drive locusts into a swarm comes from bacteria in their gut.
By Susan Milius -
What’s learning to a grasshopper?
Learning the taste of nutritious food pays off in a boost to fitness, even for a grasshopper.
By Susan Milius - Agriculture
Apple pests stand up to antibiotics
Scientists are concerned about new forms of antibiotic resistance cropping up in fire blight—a deadly disease of apple trees.
- Agriculture
Cocoa yields are mushrooming—downward
A mushroom epidemic in Brazilian cacao trees, which has cut the production of cacao by 25 percent in 5 years, may be treatable with another fungus.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
Plants seen as unpredictable carbon sponge
Changing land-use practices—especially in forests, croplands, and fallow areas—appear to play a far bigger role than anticipated in determining how much carbon gets removed from the air by vegetation.
By Janet Raloff - Astronomy
Spacecraft sounds out the sun’s hidden half
By detecting sound waves that have traveled through the sun, two physicists have for the first time found a way to view disturbances on the sun's hidden half, providing a glimpse of stormy weather patterns a week to 10 days before they come into view.
By Ron Cowen -
Tree pollination needs male-only rot
A fungus that attacks only the male flowers on the chempedak fruit tree seems to be the edible reward for pollinators—the first fungus discovered to play such a role in pollination.
By Susan Milius - Physics
Soft crystal shows off its many new facets
Experiments with a liquid crystal may confirm the 50-year-old prediction that a nearly unlimited number of facets of different orientations can simultaneously decorate a crystal surface.
By Peter Weiss - Chemistry
Power cells find uses for fossil fuel
A new fuel cell that runs on hydrocarbons such as natural gas, butane, and diesel instead of hydrogen could be an efficient, practical way to generate power without pollution.
By Corinna Wu - Humans
Message in DNA tops Science Talent Search
A project on encrypting words within a strand of DNA won the top prize at the Intel Science Talent Search.
By John Travis - Health & Medicine
Olfactory cells aid spine healing in rats
Injections of olfactory ensheathing glial cells from the brain help severed spinal cords heal in rats.
By Nathan Seppa