News
- Math
Losing to win
Two games of chance, each guaranteed to give a player a predominance of losses in the long term, can add up to a winning outcome if the player alternates between the two games.
- Health & Medicine
USDA gives nod to irradiating meats
The federal government approved food irradiation, the only technology known to kill an especially lethal strain of bacteria, for use on raw meats.
- Health & Medicine
This roe’s got a fish-E surprise
Scientists discovered a potent, new form of vitamin E, an antioxidant, in fish adapted for life in cold water.
- Health & Medicine
The salmon that went moo
People allergic to milk products could face potentially life-threatening risks by eating casein-treated fish.
- Animals
Who’s on first with hummingbird bills
A survey of 166 hummingbird species links sex differences in bill length to sex differences in plumage and to breeding behavior.
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Handsome blue tit dads have more sons
A female blue tit with a particularly dashing mate is more likely to have sons than is a female matched with a ho-hum guy.
- Animals
Marine Mules: Near-sterile hyrids boost coral diversity
Reef corals that spawn in great mixed-up soups of many species may be maintaining their diversity because their hybrids are sterile mules.
- Health & Medicine
Hemispheric Cross Talk: Brains show two sides of language function
Some people coordinate language use with both sides of their brains, allowing them to retain verbal skills after damage to one side or the other.
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Evolution’s Death Row: Groups surviving mass extinction still go bust
Groups of species may persist through major extinction events only to die off in the aftermath.
- Materials Science
Wiregate: Metallic picket fence flips magnetic bits
Rather than relegate magnetic fields to the usual backup role of data storage for computers, a new microcircuit exploits those fields for computation, possibly leading to cheaper, lower-power chips than traditional electronic ones.
- Plants
Mirror Image: Flowers with opposite styles have a fling
Scientists have discovered a gene that controls whether flowers lean to the left or the right.
- Astronomy
Outlier Planet: Extrasolar places that are like home
A team of veteran hunters of planets outside the solar system has come up with a landmark finding: a Jupiterlike planet orbiting a Sunlike star at a Jupiterlike distance.
