News
- Neuroscience
Selective memory
Using genetic engineering and chemical manipulation, scientists erased the memory of a stressful experience from a mouse’s brain.
- Humans
Middle schoolers earn top prizes in science competition
Five winners awarded top prizes in the Society for Science & the Public’s national science competition for middle school students.
- Animals
Spider males good for mating, food
Expectant mothers, including spiders, need to eat well. For Mediterranean tarantulas, a male suitor tastes just fine.
By Susan Milius - Life
Heat sensors guide insects to a hot meal
Bugs home in on seeds by detecting infrared radiation.
- Life
Avian airlines: Alaska to New Zealand nonstop
Tracked bar-tailed godwits break previous nonstop flight record for birds.
- Humans
Midlife suicides are on the rise
Data gleaned from death certificates indicate that, from 1999 to 2005, middle-aged whites accounted for much of the overall increase in the U.S. suicide rate.
By Bruce Bower - Physics
Clean coal for cars has a dirty side
Getting liquid fuels from coal would likely increase carbon emissions, and certainly not reduce them.
- Humans
Elephants’ struggle with poaching lingers on
Even as African elephants struggle to recover from decades-old poaching, the animals face new and renewed threats today.
- Life
A more fearsome saber-toothed cat
Analyses of fossils reveal that a third, newly recognized type of saber-toothed cat — one that killed by biting large chunks of flesh from its victim instead of biting its neck and slashing the major blood vessels there —roamed the Americas about a million years ago.
By Sid Perkins - Paleontology
How pterosaurs took flight
Extinct flying reptiles known as pterosaurs may have taken to the air with a technique akin to leapfrogging, new research suggests.
By Sid Perkins - Space
More problems with Hubble
Hubble’s resurrection is suspended while engineers examine two anomalies.
- Earth
An electronic nose that smells plants’ pain
Device can detect distress signals from plants that are harmed, under attack.