News
- Earth
Hot spot deep beneath North America could have triggered quakes
Mantle plume might have left trail of hot rock under continental US.
- Genetics
Genes for body symmetry may also control handedness
Lefties and righties can thank same genes that put hearts on left side for hand dominance, study of thousands of people’s DNA suggests.
- Psychology
Bad acts spark a ‘cheater’s high’
Committing low-stakes acts of dishonesty enhances perpetrators’ moods.
- Earth
Buried Saharan rivers might have been early expressways
Humans might have migrated across the arid region along three once-lush waterways.
- Physics
Notorious ‘Big G’ gets a little larger
Gravitational constant is difficult to measure, but physicists calculate with new number.
- Animals
Young insect legs have real meshing gears
Tiny teeth on hiplike structures keep legs in sync, allowing juvenile planthoppers to jump.
- Astronomy
At last, Voyager 1 slips into interstellar space
Solar blast data provides definitive evidence that Voyager 1 has cruised beyond the heliosphere and into interstellar space.
- Health & Medicine
Vaccine stops deadly sand-fly-spread scourge in animal test
A DNA vaccine triggers protection against the sand-fly-borne scourge Leishmania.
- Health & Medicine
Szechuan pepper taps at nerve fibers
The spice makes lips tingle at 50 beats per second, researchers find.
- Microbes
Horsetail spores don’t need legs to jump
Forget legs. A plant uses curly, humidity-controlled ribbons to make epic leaps.
- Animals
Avoiding feces may be ‘luxury’ wild mice can’t afford
For a mouse in the woods, finding any food at all may trump poopy locations.
- Chemistry
Meteorite that fell last year contains surprising molecules
Compounds in space rocks like the one that broke up over California may have helped seed life on Earth.
