6,698 results
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Hungry spiders tune up web jiggliness
Octonoba spiders tune the sensitivity of their webs according to how hungry they are.
- Math
If It Looks Like a Sphere…
A Russian mathematician has proposed a proof of the Poincaré conjecture, a question about the shapes of three-dimensional spaces.
- Physics
Insects in the wind lead to less power
A previously puzzling pattern of power loss in wind turbines results from coatings of insects that were smashed by the blades during low winds.
- Humans
From the April 5, 1930, issue
SPARROW-SIZE KINGFISHER The Celebes Wood Kingfisher (Ceycopsis fallax), shown on the cover of this week’s SCIENCE NEWSLETTER, is a bird scarcely as large as an English Sparrow. Similar kingfishers of tiny dimensions are found in various tropical countries. They are hunters as well as fishers and feed on insects and other life as well as […]
- Animals
Mole-rats: Kissing but not quite cousins
Damaraland mole-rats live underground in rodent versions of bee hives, but a genetic analysis of these colonies finds that kinship isn't very beelike.
- Plants
Mirror Image: Flowers with opposite styles have a fling
Scientists have discovered a gene that controls whether flowers lean to the left or the right.
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Bdelloids: No sex for over 40 million years
Researchers find the strongest evidence yet for creatures that have evolved asexually for millions of years.
- Humans
From the August 6, 1932, issue
WEIRD STINK-BUG PARENTS PRODUCE CURIOUS EGGS “Like parent, like child,” is one of the oldest and best-known folk-proverbs. It holds outside the human realm, too. For instance, the pair of stink-bugs which Cornelia Clarke’s magnifying camera lens caught for the cover of this issue of the Science News Letter are weird enough little monsters, in […]
- Humans
From the February 15, 1930, issue
ACRES OF PENGUINS IN ANTARCTICA Penguins by the acre are among the profusion of water animals inhabiting the regions adjacent to the desolate lands of Antarctica that help make its exploration of value, Dr. Isaiah Bowman, director of the American Geographical Society, told the American Philosophical Society. Dr. Bowman spoke in the 141-year-old hall of […]
- Humans
From the September 3, 1932, issue
INSECT LARVAE MAKE MOSAIC JEWELRY Manufacturers of modern jewelry might well turn to the larvae of the caddis fly for effective models for small containers–tiny perfume bottles, say, or lipstick cases. These water-dwelling “worms” build mosaic coverings for the little cylindrical houses they spin for themselves, taking bits of sand and gravel from the streambed […]
- Animals
Bees log flight distances, train with maps
After decades of work, scientists crack two problems of how bees navigate: reading bee odometers and mapping training flights.
