News
- Paleontology
New fossil suggests echolocation evolved early in whales
A 27-million-year-old whale fossil sheds light on echolocation’s beginnings.
- Genetics
Rats offer clues to biology of alcoholism
Heavy-drinking rats are giving scientists new genetic clues to alcoholism.
- Earth
China’s mythical ‘Great Flood’ possibly rooted in real disaster
Folktales of an ancient flood that helped kick off Chinese civilization may reference a nearly 4,000-year-old deluge.
- Planetary Science
Ceres is more than just a space rock
Dawn spacecraft reveals that the dwarf planet Ceres hides a core of solid rock beneath an outer crust of minerals, salts and ices.
- Animals
Diversity of indoor insects, spiders adds to life’s luxuries in high-income neighborhoods
A massive survey of indoor spiders and insects in town finds dozens of different scientific families in homes, more in high-income neighborhoods.
- Neuroscience
Running doesn’t make rats forgetful
Running doesn’t seem to wipe out old memories in rats, concludes a new study that contradicts earlier reports suggesting that exercise does actually help old memories fade and new memories form — in other rodents.
- Anthropology
Oldest evidence of cancer in human family tree found
Bony growths on fossils may push origins of this disease way back in the Stone Age.
- Paleontology
Woolly mammoths’ last request: Got water?
Woolly mammoths survived on an Alaskan island thousands of years after mainland mammoths went extinct. But they died out when their lakes dried up, thanks to a warming climate and rising sea levels.
- Archaeology
Parasitic worm eggs found on Silk Road latrine artifacts
Microscopic study of latrine finds indicates disease spread along ancient Asian trade route.
- Neuroscience
Gift-giving brain cells are lifeline to injured nerve cells
After an injury, astrocytes give nerve cells a gift of mitochondria, mouse study suggests.
- Life
Human eye spots single photons
Human eyes are sensitive enough to detect individual particles of light.
- Life
Distinctions blur between wolf species
Red and eastern wolves might be gray wolf/coyote blends instead of distinct species
