News
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Eye-Grabbing Insights: Visual structure grips infants’ attention
Babies take their first major strides with their eyes, not their legs, as they rapidly distinguish among playpens, pacifiers, and a plethora of other objects.
- Animals
Lizard’s Choice: Mating test pits physique versus domain
When she decides to move in, is it him or is it his real estate?
- Health & Medicine
Coconspirator? Genital herpes linked to cervical cancer
Having a genital herpes infection doubles the risk of cervical cancer among women who have human papillomavirus.
- Astronomy
Neutron Star Stuff: Just neutrons, no quarks
A new study suggests that although neutron stars may be weird, they’re not strange.
- Tech
Nanotech Switch: Strategy controls minuscule motor
Researchers have modified a rotating protein fragment so that it starts and stops spinning with the addition and removal of zinc.
- Earth
Wildfire Below: Smoldering peat disgorges huge volumes of carbon
Set alight by wildfires, thick beds of decaying tropical plant matter can pump massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, rivaling those produced globally each year from the combustion of fossil fuels.
- Physics
Motor design flouts physical law
A proposed silicon device the size of a red blood cell would transform random thermal motion into useful mechanical power in violation of the second law of thermodynamics, its designers claim.
- Materials Science
Knitting with nanotubes
Researchers can draw fine yarns of carbon nanotubes from a reservoir of the microscopic cylinders.
- Physics
Putting the brakes on antihydrogen
By mixing ultracold antiprotons and antielectrons, physicists have created the first atoms of antihydrogen that move at a leisurely enough pace for direct measurements of their properties.
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Brain trait fosters stress disorder
A brain-scan study of pairs of twin brothers, in each of which only one twin had been a Vietnam combat veteran, indicates that the inheritance of an undersized brain structure called the hippocampus predisposes individuals to post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Ant cheats plant; plant cheats back
An Amazonian tree grows little pouches on its leaves to invite ants to move in and provide guard duty, but the tree drops the pouches from old leaves because ants ravage the flowers.
- Astronomy
Enlarging a Mars photo album
A new set of more than 18,000 images of Mars, posted online in early October, features the sharpest picture of the Red Planet ever taken by an orbiting spacecraft.
