News
- Planetary Science
Mars’ ionosphere mystery explained
A decades-old disagreement between the Viking landers and spacecraft buzzing around Mars might come down to what time of day each was investigating the Red Planet’s ionosphere.
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- Environment
Home fires, farm fumes are leading causes of air-pollution deaths
Deadly air pollution comes from surprising sources, but toxicity of different types is still up in the air.
- Animals
Dogs flub problem-solving test
Confronting a tough task, dogs are more likely than wolves to give up and gaze at a human
- Science & Society
Short memory can be good strategy
Game theory reveals that there’s a limit to the effectiveness of relying on prior results to predict competitors’ behavior.
- Materials Science
Electron waves refract negatively
Waves of electrons have been bent backward in a sheet of graphene, allowing physicists to focus electrons the way a lens focuses light.
- Animals
Loss of vision meant energy savings for cavefish
Novel measurement feeds idea that tight energy budgets favored vision loss in cavefish.
- Planetary Science
Asteroid impacts may explain Venus’ missing oxygen
Asteroid impacts on Venus might have helped sequester oxygen left behind when Earth’s sister planet lost its water, new simulations show.
- Health & Medicine
Less vitamin D and melatonin bad for multiple sclerosis
Vitamin D and melatonin play important roles in multiple sclerosis.
- Life
Humans adjust walking style for energy efficiency
Humans can adjust their steps to walk in a way that uses the least amount of energy.
- Anthropology
Fossils suggest new species from human genus
Undated South African cave fossils may reveal a new species in the human genus.
- Neuroscience
Misfolded proteins implicated in more brain diseases
Alzheimer’s, other disorders show similarity to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and other prion infections.
