Uncategorized
- Anthropology
Care-Worn Fossils
A nearly toothless fossil jaw found in France has reignited scientific debate over whether the skeletal remains of physically disabled individuals show that our Stone Age ancestors provided life-saving care to the ill and infirm.
By Bruce Bower -
Spider real estate wars: Wake up early
Big spiders in a colony get prime real estate day after day by spinning webs early.
By Susan Milius -
Dolphins bray when chasing down a fish
The first high-resolution analysis of which dolphin is making which sound suggests that hunters blurt out a low-frequency, donkeylike sound that may startle prey into freezing for an instant or attract other dolphins.
By Susan Milius -
Invader ants win by losing diversity
The Argentine ants that are trouncing U.S. species derive much of their takeover power, oddly enough, from losing genetic diversity.
By Susan Milius -
19155
I think it’s more than coincidental that the sound repertoire of babbling babies, compared with the speech sounds in a diversity of languages across the world, lends credence to the idea that there was a mother tongue that goes back to prehistoric times. Readers of the Bible will recall that it was after the fall […]
By Science News -
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Attachment disorder draws closer look
A substantial minority of children exposed to severe deprivation in institutions as infants can't form close relationships, a condition for which there is no established treatment.
By Bruce Bower -
19154
The initial conclusions of the study of Romanian children raised in orphanages and adopted in Britain would seem to this adoptive parent to be prematurely optimistic. A study based on subjects aged only up to 6 years can hardly conclude that severe deprivation “doesn’t inevitably undermine social functioning.” On the basis of the experience of […]
By Science News - Earth
Warm band may have girdled snowball Earth
A swath a liquid ocean may have hugged the planet's midriff even during the most frigid global climatic episodes between 800 million and 600 million years ago, allowing life to survive.
By Peter Weiss - Health & Medicine
New inner ear hair cells grow in rat tissue
Using a gene known to control hair-cell growth, researchers have grown hair cells in tissue taken from newborn rats' cochleas, raising hopes that inner ear damage may someday be reversible.
By Nathan Seppa -
Popularity of germ fighter raises concern
The growing use of the antiseptic triclosan in products ranging from mouthwash to cutting boards and hunting clothes may create bacteria resistant to antibiotic drugs.
By John Travis - Animals
The whole beehive gets a fever…
When bee larvae are fighting off disease, the nest temperature rises, so the whole hive gets a fever.
By Susan Milius