News
- Humans
Possibly pivotal human ancestor debated
An ancient species that may have sparked the rise of humankind gets a new appraisal.
- Life
Complex life hit freshwater early
Tiny fossils in Scottish rock show that cells with nuclei had spread beyond the seas by a billion years ago.
- Earth
Seismologists rumble over quake clusters
Japan tremor may be part of a second grouping of great quakes since 1900, some scientists say.
- Life
Gone fishing, orangutan-style
Apes that catch fish in ponds and eat them raise the possibility that ancient hominids did the same.
- Physics
Time travel nixed in metamaterial world
A desktop universe captures essential properties of the real thing.
- Physics
How bicycles keep the rubber on the road
An international collaboration tries to explain the surprising stability of two-wheeled travel.
- Life
New light on moths gone soot-colored
Researchers trace the mutation that led to the dramatic darkening of an insect's wings during England's industrial revolution to a region rich in genes that control color patterns.
- Life
Dangerous dinos came out after dark
Predatory dinosaurs probably stalked the night, scientists say.
- Space
XENON100 fails to find dark matter
A hundred days of solitude for an experiment designed to rendezvous with the universe's missing mass put new limits on the elusive material's properties.
- Health & Medicine
Body’s immune protein fights breast cancer
A new study clarifies the role of interleukin-25 in stalling malignancy, possibly clearing the way for new drug development.
- Life
Antarctic lake hides bizarre ecosystem
Bacterial colonies form cones similar to fossilized examples of Earth’s early life.
- Chemistry
Plants and predators pick same poison
Zygaena caterpillars and their herbaceous hosts independently evolved an identical recipe for cyanide.
