News
- Earth
Acid test points to coming fish troubles
Young fish can suffer severe damage from the ocean acidification expected within this century.
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Gene therapy helps counter hemophilia B
Treatment enables cells to produce a key blood-clotting compound, allowing some patients to quit medication.
By Nathan Seppa - Chemistry
Deep-sea battery comes to light
Microbes fuel a weak electrical current at hydrothermal vents.
By Devin Powell - Earth
Weather affects timing of some natural hazards
Seasonal patterns in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions can be linked to rain and snow in certain locations.
- Humans
Tools of a kind
People in southern Arabia around 100,000 years ago made tools like those of East Africans.
By Bruce Bower - Life
Mere fear shrinks bird families
Just hearing recordings of predators, in the absence of any real danger, caused sparrows to raise fewer babies.
By Susan Milius -
- Life
Cilia control eating signal
Little hairlike appendages in brain cells control weight by sequestering an appetite hormone.
- Health & Medicine
Bedbugs not averse to inbreeding
The pests have also developed ways to resist common insecticides, research shows.
By Nathan Seppa - Life
Building the body electric
Eyes can be grown in a frog’s gut by changing cells’ electrical properties, scientists find, opening up new possibilities for generating and regenerating complex organs.
- Earth
Dead Sea once went dry
The Holy Land’s salt lake ran out of water during a warm spell about 120,000 years ago, which suggests it could disappear again.
By Devin Powell - Space
Distant world looks too ripe for life
The first extrasolar planet to be discovered in its star’s habitable zone is probably inhospitably hot.
By Nadia Drake