News
- Paleontology
Unexpected Archive: Mammoth hair yields ancient DNA
Hair from ancient mammoths contains enough genetic material to permit reconstruction of parts of the animal's genome.
By Sid Perkins - Health & Medicine
Distracted? Tea might help your focus
An amino acid in tea combines with the brew's caffeine to enliven brain cells that aid concentration.
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Tea compound aids dying brain cells
A constituent of green tea rescues brain cells damaged in a way that mimics the effect of Parkinson's disease.
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Malaria’s sweet spot
The malaria parasite's reliance on a sugar in the gut of mosquitoes may offer a way to block the disease's transmission.
- Astronomy
Out-of-focus find
Blurry images yield estimates of the true width of glowing meteor vapor trails in Earth's upper atmosphere.
By Sid Perkins -
- Animals
Honeybee mobs smother big hornets
Honeybees gang up on an attacking hornet, killing it by blocking its breathing.
By Susan Milius - Health & Medicine
Exhaust fumes might threaten people’s hearts
Nanoparticles in diesel fumes thwart proteins that dissolve blood clots, perhaps increasing the risk of heart attacks.
- Physics
Not flipping out
A single atom on a surface has favored magnetic orientations that could allow it to encode a data bit.
- Tech
Nanotube Press: Printing technique makes nanotransistors
A new technique for printing networks of carbon nanotubes on a wide range of surfaces is a step toward mass production of nanotubes devices.
- Paleontology
Bumpy Bones: Fossil hints that dinosaur had feathery forearms
A series of knobs on the forearm bone of a 1.5-meter-long velociraptor provides the first direct evidence of substantial feathers on a dinosaur of that size.
By Sid Perkins - Planetary Science
Muddying the Water? Orbiter drains confidence from fluid story of Mars
New images of Mars diminish the evidence that liquid water has flowed on some parts of the planet, but bolster the case in other places.
By Ron Cowen