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AnthropologyEuropean find gets Stone Age date
A new radiocarbon analysis indicates that a skeleton found more than a century ago in an Italian cave dates to around 26,400 to 23,200 years ago.
By Bruce Bower -
EarthAncient whalers altered arctic lakes
Analyses of sediment and water samples taken from an arctic lake indicate that an ancient whaling community left a mark on the lake’s ecosystem that persists today, even though the settlement was abandoned more than 400 years ago.
By Sid Perkins -
AnimalsHow blind mole rats find their way home
The blind mole rat is the first animal discovered to navigate by combining dead reckoning with a magnetic compass.
By Susan Milius -
Health & MedicineVirus might explain respiratory ailments
Human metapneumovirus, first isolated in 2001, is present in many respiratory infections that had previously gone unexplained.
By Nathan Seppa -
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Your article refers to a virus as a “microbe.” I think of a virus more as a seed or spore. What definition is Science News using for the word? Neil MurphyWalnut Creek, Calif. Medical dictionaries differ in defining viruses as microbes . Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Eleventh Edition ( 2003, Merriam-Webster ) says that viruses are […]
By Science News -
Monkeys heed neural calls of the wild
A part of the brain that's involved in sound processing shows pronounced activity when rhesus monkeys hear their comrades vocalizing but not when the same animals hear other sounds.
By Bruce Bower -
AstronomyPoof goes an atmosphere
Blasted by the heat and radiation from its parent star, a planet 150 light-years from Earth is literally blowing off its atmosphere.
By Ron Cowen -
Bacteria do the twist
A newly identified bacterial protein generates the sinuous shapes of some bacteria.
By John Travis -
TechDiagnosing the Developing World
Researchers are learning how to adapt sophisticated technologies to meet the health-care needs of the developing world.
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Code Breakers
Chemical tags applied to proteins that DNA wraps around regulate genetic activity.
By John Travis -
AnimalsWhere’d I Put That?
Birds that hide and recover thousands of separate caches of seeds have become a model for investigating how animals' minds work.
By Susan Milius -
MathTurning a Snowball Inside Out
Turning a sphere inside out without allowing any sharp creases along the way is a tricky mathematical maneuver. Carving an intricate snow sculpture depicting a crucial step in this twisty transformation presents its own difficulties. This was the challenge facing a team led by mathematician Stan Wagon of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., last […]