Notebook
- Tech
Pill measures gut gas
A gas-sensing ingestible capsule tested in pigs could someday help doctors assess people’s gastrointestinal health.
- Animals
Harvester ants are restless, enigmatic architects
Florida harvester ants dig complex, curly nests over, then leave and do it again.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Meet the tarantula in black
Named for Johnny Cash, a new species of tarantula makes its home in the shadow of Folsom Prison.
- Science & Society
Soviets nailed first landing on moon
The first spacecraft to safely land on the moon touched down on the lunar surface in 1966.
- Paleontology
Plesiosaurs swam like penguins
Computer simulations of plesiosaur swimming motion may resolve long-standing debate on how the marine reptile got around.
- Animals
Christmas tree worms have eyes that breathe, gills that see
Christmas tree worms and other fan worms have improvised some of the oddest eyes.
By Susan Milius - Physics
Early quark estimates not entirely realized
Decades of research have shed a little light on quarks, the mysterious building blocks of atoms.
- Astronomy
The votes are in: Exoplanets get new names
Arion, Galileo and Poltergeist are just three winners of a contest to name planets and suns in 20 solar systems.
- Anthropology
Iceman has the world’s oldest tattoos
A more than 5,000-year-old European mummy gets his tattoos confirmed as world’s oldest.
By Bruce Bower - Animals
Ants don’t make decisions on the move
Worker ants stand still while processing environmental cues and planning their next moves, a new study suggests.
- Astronomy
Clues left at a galactic hit-and-run
Scientists may have discovered a dwarf galaxy that triggered a “galaxy quake” when it buzzed by the Milky Way a few hundred million years ago.
By Andrew Grant - Paleontology
Fossils provide link in dino crest evolution
Fossils from a newly identified duck-billed dinosaur in Montana could explain how their descendants developed flamboyant nose crests.