News

  1. Animals

    Pothole Pals: Ants pave roads for fellow raiders

    By throwing their bodies into tiny potholes on rough trails, army ants enable their comrade to race over them, improving the colony's overall foraging success.

    By Susan Milius
  2. Health & Medicine

    Early Start: Fetuses generate immune response to vaccination

    A fetus can manufacture immune cells and antibodies in direct response to vaccine given to the mother during pregnancy.

    By Nathan Seppa
  3. Earth

    Ice Age Ends Smashingly: Did a comet blow up over eastern Canada?

    An extraterrestrial object apparently exploded above Canada about 12,900 years ago, sparking devastating wildfires and triggering a millennium-long cold spell.

    By Sid Perkins
  4. Earth

    Using seismometers to monitor glaciers

    Seismic instruments could be used to estimate the amount of ice that shears away from glaciers as they flow into the sea, offering a way to better estimate sea level rise due to the breakup of those ice masses.

    By Sid Perkins
  5. Physics

    Carbon’s mysterious magnetism

    An X-ray experiment has yielded the most conclusive evidence to date that carbon can be magnetic.

    By Davide Castelvecchi
  6. Planetary Science

    Powering Enceladus’ plumes

    The action of Saturn's gravity is responsible for plumes of water vapor shooting out from cracks on the moon Enceladus.

    By Ron Cowen
  7. Health & Medicine

    Stem cells not required

    Insulin-producing cells in the pancreas proliferate by cell division, unlike other body tissues, which regenerate from adult stem cells.

    By Patrick Barry
  8. Humans

    Hot Competition: Students display winning projects

    High school students from 51 countries gathered in Albuquerque last week to compete for scholarships and other prizes at the 2007 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

    By Emily Sohn

  9. Face Talk: Babies see their way to language insights

    Babies 4 to 6 months old can distinguish between two languages solely by watching a speaker's face, without hearing sound.

    By Bruce Bower

  10. Dark Power: Pigment seems to put radiation to good use

    The pigment melanin may enable certain fungi to convert dangerous radiation into usable energy.

    By Davide Castelvecchi
  11. Earth

    Fish Free Fall: Hormone leads to population decline

    Trace amounts of the synthetic estrogen used in birth control pills can cause a fish population to collapse.

    By Aimee Cunningham
  12. Health & Medicine

    Circadian Fix: Viagra may lessen effects of jet lag

    Sildenafil, the male-impotence drug marketed as Viagra, helps laboratory rodents recovery from circadian disruptions similar to jet lag.

    By Nathan Seppa