News
- Astronomy
Stopping starlight may bring other Earths into focus
Two new telescope concepts compete for NASA’s approval, in hopes of taking the first picture of a life-bearing exoplanet.
- Agriculture
Fertilizer produces far more greenhouse gas than expected
Farmers’ overuse of nitrogen-based fertilizers may explain previously puzzling high emissions of nitrous oxide.
- Neuroscience
Rats feel regret, experiment finds
When they turn down a good meal for a lesser one, rodents regret their choice, a study suggests.
- Materials Science
New invisibility cloak hides in the fog
A simple invisibility cloak relies on hazy environments to mask objects.
- Neuroscience
Sleep strengthens some synapses
Mice show signs of stronger neuron connections when allowed to sleep after learning a trick.
- Planetary Science
Moon’s origins revealed in rocks’ chemistry
A new chemical measurement of rocks from Earth and from the moon supports the giant impact hypothesis, which explains how the moon formed billions of years ago.
- Genetics
Bromine found to be essential to animal life
Fruit flies deprived of the element bromine can’t make normal connective tissue that supports cells and either don’t hatch or die as larvae.
- Life
Hatcheries’ metal can disrupt steelhead magnetic sense
Growing up in magnetic fields distorted by pipes and electronics confounds young fish’s inherited map sense.
- Health & Medicine
Early malnutrition may impair infants’ mix of gut microbes
Babies’ gut microbiomes fail to fully recover even after fending off bouts with malnutrition.
- Astronomy
Rocky, overweight planet shakes up theories
Kepler-10c is a rocky exoplanet 17 times as massive as Earth, and astronomers are puzzled as to how it formed.
- Health & Medicine
Health risks of e-cigarettes emerge
Research uncovers a growing list of chemicals that end up in an e-cigarette user’s lungs, and one study finds that an e-cigarette’s vapors can increase the virulence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
- Chemistry
Bacteria take plants to biofuel in one step
Engineered bacterium singlehandedly dismantles tough switchgrass molecules, making sugars that it ferments to make ethanol.
