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Earth

Wretched weather sealed explorer’s fate

Unusually low temperatures hindered Robert Falcon Scott's polar expedition in 1912.

Earth

Taking a mountain’s measure

A survey of Mount Everest alters its official elevation to 29,035 feet.

Humans

An Artist’s Timely Riddles

A team of researchers demonstrates that there may be much more to the art of Marcel Duchamp than meets the casual, or even critical, eye.

Math

Setting Records Randomly

A wide variety of factors can influence the winning time of a race. For a given event over the course of a year, for example, the results may depend on the quality of the runners, the race location, weather conditions, and so on. In a 1985 article in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, […]

Earth

Corals keep eruption record

Dust from a giant eruption is lodged within Florida coral.

Earth

Mapping the Frozen Sky: Study looks at clouds from both sides now

By combining simultaneous observations from satellites and ground-based instruments, scientists can generate a three-dimensional map of the size and distribution of ice particles in a cirrus cloud.

Animals

Male bats primp daily for odor display

For the first time, scientists have described the daily routine of male sac-winged bats gathering to freshen the odor pouches on their wings.

Health & Medicine

Stem cells repair rat spinal cord damage

Using embryonic stem cells from mice, researchers restored some movement in paralyzed rats that had undergone a crippling spinal injury.

Physics

Time’s arrow may make U-turns in universe

Time may run backwards for isolated chunks of matter in our universe and that reversed state could be probed gently from the forward-going realm without disturbing the time arrow.

Chemistry

Antibiotics may become harder to resist

Drug designers have developed new tactics to make it harder for bacteria to survive exposure to antibiotics.