News
- Life
Human noses know more than 1 trillion odors
Sense of smell displays a vast reach in study of people’s ability to distinguish between scents.
- Animals
Like a boomerang, relocated python comes back again
Burmese pythons, which have invaded the Everglades, can find their way home when people move them dozens of kilometers.
- Space
Exoplanet oxygen may not signal alien life
Oxygen in an exoplanet atmosphere may come from water and ultraviolet light, not alien life.
- Cosmology
Gravitational waves unmask universe just after Big Bang
For the first time, researchers have seen traces of superfast cosmic expansion and gravity waves.
- Physics
A tractor beam reels in objects with sound
A tractor beam of focused sound waves has pulled on an object as large as a Toblerone chocolate bar.
- Science & Society
Slight boost for U.S. climate research funding
While most science funding remains flat lined in President Obama’s 2015 budget, climate change research gets an increase.
- Astronomy
Behemoth star destroys potential solar systems
A massive star in the Orion Nebula is evaporating disks surrounding young stars in its neighborhood but some disks mysteriously manage to survive.
- Archaeology
Roman gladiator school digitally rebuilt
Imaging techniques unveil a 1,900-year-old Roman gladiators’ training center that’s buried beneath a site in Austria.
- Health & Medicine
Experimental drug might get the salt out
Tests in people and rats show sodium levels in blood drop as drug candidate limits the body’s salt absorption.
- Paleontology
Fossil whale skull hints at echolocation’s origins
Ancestors of toothed whales used echolocation as early as 34 million years ago, analysis of a new fossil skull suggests.
- Neuroscience
Brain chemicals help worms live long and prosper
Serotonin and dopamine accompany long lives in C. elegans worms under caloric restriction.
- Life
Acid-bath method for making stem cells under fire
No one has been able to reproduce a new technique for creating stem cells called STAP cells, leading some researchers to call for the retraction of the original research papers.
