News
- Anthropology
Encore for Evolutionary Small-Timers: Tiny human cousins get younger with new finds
Excavations in an Indonesian cave have yielded more fossils of short, upright creatures that lived as recently as 12,000 years ago.
- Earth
Drought’s heat killed Southwest’s piñon forests
The heat accompanying a drought and a plague of bark beetles seem to explain the deaths of swathes of piñon pine trees across the Southwest in 2002 and 2003.
- Tech
Road Warriors: Robotic vehicles triumph over desert obstacles
In a landmark contest that has spurred advances in robotic-vehicle technology, five driverless racing machines piloted themselves over more than 200 kilometers of rugged desert terrain.
- Health & Medicine
Vaccine Clears Major Hurdle: Injections offer new tool against cervical cancers
An experimental vaccine against the virus that causes most cancers of the cervix has passed a test typically needed for regulatory approval.
- Paleontology
Raptor Line: Fossil finds push back dinosaur ancestry
Fossils of a newly discovered raptor dinosaur species suggest that the reptile's lineage is older and more widespread than previously suspected.
- Materials Science
Filling in the blanks
Scientists have added precision to a patterning technique called microcontact printing.
- Planetary Science
Mission to the outer limits
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has taken up temporary residence at the Kennedy Space Center, where engineers are doing final testing before the craft begins its 9-year voyage to the outer solar system.
- Earth
The browning of Europe
The lengthy heat wave and drought that struck Europe in the summer of 2003 stifled the growth of vegetation and thereby reduced the amount of carbon dioxide that the continent's plants extracted from the atmosphere.
- Animals
Baited camera snaps first live giant squid
For the first time, researchers have photographed a living giant squid in the wild.
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Dutch elm fungus turns tree into lure
The fungus that causes Dutch elm disease makes an infected tree strengthen its odors, attracting beetles that carry the fungus on to the next tree.
- Health & Medicine
Vitamin C may treat cancer after all
Vitamin C may be an effective cancer fighter when taken intravenously in high doses.
- Anthropology
Wild gorillas take time for tool use
Gorillas that balance on walking sticks and trudge across makeshift bridges have provided the first evidence of tool use among these creatures in the wild.
