Uncategorized
- Animals
Too Few Jaws: Shark declines let rays overgraze scallops
A shortage of big sharks on the U.S. East Coast is letting their prey flourish, and that prey is going hog wild, demolishing bay scallop populations.
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Family Feud: Genetic arms race between parents benefits male offspring in a surprising way
A gene in mice that benefits the father at the mother's expense appears to help offspring of both sexes.
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Bipolar Surprise: Mood disorder endures antidepressant setback
Severe depression in patients with bipolar disorder responds no better to a combination of antidepressants and mood-stabilizing drugs than to mood stabilizers alone.
- Astronomy
Late Bloomer: Hubble studies once-dormant galaxy
A wispy dwarf galaxy called Leo A has the potential to change the way astronomers build theoretical models of galaxy evolution.
- Health & Medicine
Asthma Zap: Heated scope reduces attacks
A new tool cools asthma by heating lung tissue to kill overgrown smooth muscle in airways, a hallmark of the disease.
- Humans
Chasing money for science
Stagnant funding for the National Institutes of Health is forcing scientists to downsize their labs and abandon some of their most promising work.
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- Paleontology
Birds’ ancestors had small genomes too
Among mammals, reptiles, and related animals, today's birds have the smallest genomes, and the dinosaurs that gave rise to birds had small genomes as well.
- Planetary Science
Radar probes frozen water at Martian pole
If all the frozen water stored near the south pole of Mars suddenly melted, it would make a planetwide ocean 11 meters deep.
- Math
Big prize for unlikely research
A New York University mathematician has won one of the highest prizes in mathematics for figuring out the likelihood of unlikely events.
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How smart are amoebas?
Amoebas seem to possess a rudimentary form of memory that keeps them from walking around in circles.
- Plants
Old plants were lost in the grass
An obscure family of plants long thought to be relatives of grasses turns out to represent one of the most ancient surviving lineages of flowering plants.
