News
- Space
Distant world looks ripe for life
Extrasolar planet hunt spots its most Earthlike orb yet.
By Nadia Drake - Humans
DNA highlights Native American die-off
A genetic analysis points to widespread New World deaths after Europeans arrived.
By Bruce Bower -
- Earth
Arctic has taken a turn for the warmer
Northern climate has changed substantially in the last five years, and the shift is probably permanent.
By Janet Raloff - Humans
Neandertals’ mammoth building project
Stone Age people’s evolutionary cousins may have constructed earliest bone structures.
By Bruce Bower - Earth
Polar ice sheets are synchronized swimmers
Glaciers in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres advance and retreat together.
By Nick Bascom - Health & Medicine
Immune booster also works in reverse
Injections of the protein interleukin-2 can calm runaway defenses that damage tissues in the body, two studies show.
By Nathan Seppa - Health & Medicine
Weaker brain links found in psychopaths
Decreased communication between emotional and executive centers may contribute to the mental disorder.
- Space
Christmas gamma-ray burst still puzzles
Nearly a year after receiving a spectacular celestial gift, astrophysicists are still asking: “What is it?”
By Nadia Drake - Space
Superbubble harbors cosmic rays
Stellar nursery jump-starts rays’ journey to Earth.
By Nadia Drake - Life
Biology’s big bang had a long fuse
The fossil record’s earliest troves of animal life are the result of more than 200 million years of evolution.
By Susan Milius - Humans
Cooking can be surprisingly forgiving
Network analysis confirms deviations from the recipe are quite feasible.