News
- Life
Fish ignore alarming noises in acidifying seawater
Something about changing ocean chemistry could make young clownfish behave oddly around normally alarming sounds.
By Susan Milius - Life
Mellow corals beat the heat
Species that overreact to distress signals from algae are more likely to succumb to warming.
- Psychology
Kids own up to ownership
Children value personal ownership more than adults do and may need to learn when to disregard possessive urges.
By Bruce Bower - Physics
What it means to ‘feel the noise’
Scientists investigating the nexus between sound and touch suggest that the ear arose from skin.
By Devin Powell -
- Health & Medicine
Bacterial meningitis keeps falling
Vaccination against a strep bacterium and other microbes has proved a potent deterrent over the past decade, a nationwide survey shows.
By Nathan Seppa - Space
Survey captures local universe in 3-D
The most complete view to date of the nearby cosmos takes in 45,000 galaxies.
By Ron Cowen - Health & Medicine
Clues to autism’s roots from brain study
A new analysis finds differences in genetic activity, especially in genes controlling nerve cell form and function.
- Life
Hey kitty, dogs drink like cats
High-speed video shows that canines don’t simply scoop up water, they toss it into their mouths just like their feline frenemies.
By Susan Milius - Physics
Gators go a-courtin’ with fancy physics
Their subsonic mating bellows generate Faraday waves, a phenomenon almost never seen outside the lab.
By Devin Powell - Earth
Germy with a chance of hail
Aerial microbes can trigger precipitation and may influence global warming.
By Janet Raloff - Chemistry
Natural pain-killing chemical synthesized
Conolidine — a headache to isolate from the plant that makes it — can now be produced from scratch in the lab, opening the promising compound to study.