6,697 results
-
Into the Fold
Flat structures pop into 3-D forms, yielding miniature robots and tools.
- Humans
Yet another study links insecticide to bee losses
Since 2006, honeybee populations across North America have been hammered by catastrophic losses. Although this pandemic has a name — colony collapse disorder, or CCD — its cause has remained open to speculation. New experiments now strengthen the case for pesticide poisoning as a likely contributor.
- Life
Pollutants long gone, but disease carries on
Even without new exposures, various chemicals can impact DNA and cause illness across at least three subsequent generations, rat study finds.
- Life
Yeast find use for misfolded proteins
Protein bundles may help single-celled organisms adapt to difficult environmental conditions.
- Chemistry
For truffle aroma, it’s not all about location
Genes, not environment, play a key role in the prized fungus’s scent.
- Paleontology
Oxygen blew up ancient amoebas
Single-celled creatures' size spiked as oxygen levels rose.
- Life
Scent Into Action
Rodent responses to a whiff of predator may offer clues to instinct in the brain.
- Humans
Bt: The lesson not learned
The more things change, the more they stay the same, as a Dec. 29 Associated Press report on genetically engineered corn notes. Like déjà vu, this news story on emerging resistance to Bt toxin — a fabulously effective and popular insecticide to protect corn — brings to mind articles I encountered over the weekend while flipping through historic issues of Science News. More than a half-century ago, our magazine chronicled, real time, the emergence of resistance to DDT, the golden child of pest controllers worldwide. Now much the same thing is happening again with Bt, its contemporary agricultural counterpart. Will we never learn?
-
- Life
Food makes male flies frisky
Courtship behavior in a classic lab insect is driven by the aroma of dinner.
- Life
Diving spiders make their own gills
Eurasian diving bell spiders, the only truly aquatic arachnids, survive underwater with the help of “physical gills,” scientists say.
-
