News

  1. Earth

    Under Pressure: High-stress tests show surprising change in a mantle mineral’s behavior

    Compressing a common iron-bearing mineral to the pressures found deep within Earth makes the material much stiffer, which might explain why seismic waves travel particularly fast through some zones of rock.

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  2. Bacterial Snitch: Species competes by telling on another

    A bacterial species that typically colonizes people's noses may win out over another bacterium by tattling to the host's immune system.

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  3. Animals

    Meat-Eating Caterpillar: It hunts snails and ties them down

    A newly named species of Hawaiian caterpillar sneaks up on a resting snail and quickly spins silk strands around it, lashing it to the spot, and then eats it.

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  4. Earth

    Ultrasound solution to toxin pollution

    Ultrasound treatment of water can generate reactive chemicals that destroy potentially lethal algal toxins.

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  5. Astronomy

    Grand illusion

    Astronomers have detected the most distant cosmic mirage ever recorded.

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  6. Animals

    Ladybug mom provides infertile eggs as baby food

    When food gets scarce, multicolored Asian ladybugs lay extra dud eggs that can end up as emergency rations for their young.

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  7. Yellow color gives microbe its power

    The bright-yellow pigment that tints the bacteria that cause staph infections is pivotal to the microbe's virulence.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    A problem at hand for catchers

    A young professional baseball catcher, who may receive more than 100 pitches per game thrown at more than 90 miles per hour, may be virtually certain to develop circulatory abnormalities in his catching hand.

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  9. Agriculture

    Soy-protein quality versus quantity

    New tests show that as the protein yields of soybeans rise, the growth-enhancing quality of that protein as a food or feed decreases.

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  10. Anthropology

    People fired up Aussie extinctions

    Early Australian settlers may have altered the continent's landscape around 50,000 years ago, leading to the extinction of many animal species.

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  11. Astronomy

    Core mystery

    Despite new images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the brightest known supernova of the past 400 years remains a puzzle for astronomers.

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  12. Astronomy

    Triple Play: A planet with three suns

    Three suns grace the skies above a newly found, Jupiterlike extrasolar planet, posing a puzzle for how massive planets form in a closely-knit, multiple-star system.

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