News
- Life
Microbes’ role in truffle scents not trifling
Truffles make their prized aroma with a little help from their microbes, chemists suggest.
- Life
Laser light made inside cells
Microscopic beads and oil droplets become lasers when implanted into cells.
- Physics
Revamping the metric measure of mass
The units of the metric system are on track for a 2018 makeover.
- Planetary Science
Pluto’s icy landscape comes into view
The New Horizons flyby reveals varied terrain and evidence of active geology on Pluto.
- Planetary Science
Ice flows, haze offer more clues to Pluto’s geology
New Horizons’ latest data reveal more hints about Pluto’s shrinking atmosphere and possible underground ocean.
- Animals
Social pecking order gives roosters something to crow about
Small groups of laboratory roosters keep to the rankings for orderly morning crows.
- Space
Best cosmic ‘cradles of life’ may be elliptical in shape
Giant elliptical galaxies might harbor up to 10,000 times as many Earthlike planets than galaxies like the Milky Way.
- Astronomy
Kepler telescope identifies new ‘habitable zone’ planet
A new analysis of data from NASA’s Kepler mission has uncovered a planet orbiting a sunlike star that could be Earth’s “cousin.”
- Paleontology
Sudden heat spikes did in Ice Age’s mammoth mammals
Abrupt warming and excessive hunting by ancient humans were responsible for the disappearance of many large mammals, including woolly mammoths, during Earth’s last glacial period.
- Paleontology
Museum fossil links snakes to lizards
Scientists have discovered the fossilized remains of the first four-legged snake. The fossil bridges the gap between snakes and lizards.
- Life
Cells from grandma help keep fetus safe
Grandmother’s cells may watch over grandchildren in the womb.
- Neuroscience
Boosting estrogen, only in the brain
Scientists have developed a chemical that transforms into the hormone estrogen in the brain, but not the body, of rats.
