Science & Society
Book delves into Scientific Revolution way beyond Galileo
‘Voyaging in Strange Seas’ shows that modern science was built not just by giants but by hundreds who explored all realms of science.
Reviews & Previews
Science Visualized
Earth
Wonders of the northern lights
An Icelandic aurora catches a photographer’s eye and a contest prize.
Notebook
Paleontology
Fossils reveal largest airborne bird
Despite its massive size, an extinct bird may have been an efficient glider.
Features
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Searching for distant signals
Fast radio bursts are bright, brief and seem to come from very far away. Astronomers are pointing major telescopes skyward to solve the puzzle of these cryptic signals.
More Stories from the August 9, 2014 issue
- Health & Medicine
Junk food ahead of pregnancy may harm baby-to-be
Women who have poor diets in the year before conception might have a higher risk of delivering a baby preterm than do women who eat healthful foods
- Psychology
Tablet devices help kids with autism speak up
Talking iPads may help break the near-silence of some kids with autism.
- Life
Tibetans live high life thanks to extinct human relatives
DNA shared by modern-day Tibetans and extinct Denisovans suggests people picked up helpful genes through interbreeding with other hominids.
- Health & Medicine
Supercooling makes livers for transplants last longer
Supercooling a rat liver for transplant greatly increased an organ’s survival time outside the body, potentially opening the door for global allocation of human organs.
- Astronomy
Exoplanets once trumpeted as life-friendly may not exist
Two exoplanets considered among the most promising for hosting life may not exist, a new study suggests.
- Psychology
People will take pain over being left alone with their thoughts
Evidence suggests that people dislike solitary thought so much that some prefer electric shocks.
- Earth
Oklahoma earthquakes triggered by wastewater injection
Dumping wastewater from the oil and gas industry into disposal wells may have set off swarm of earthquakes in Oklahoma.
- Astronomy
Rare planet circles just one of a pair of stars
A newly discovered exoplanet orbits one star in a binary pair and shows that planets can form even with a second sun nearby.
- Earth
Gravity variations foretell flood risk months in advance
Tiny gravitational tugs from saturated river basins allow NASA satellites to forecast flood risk.
- Environment
Microplastics lodge in crab gills and guts
Crabs can absorb microplastic particles through their gills and by eating polluted mussels.
- Paleontology
Duck-billed dinosaurs roamed the Arctic in herds
Young and old duck-billed dinosaurs lived together in herds in the Arctic, tracks preserved in Alaska indicate.
- Life
Gecko adhesion takes electric turn
Challenging a favored theory, measurements suggest that electrostatic interactions make gecko feet supersticky.
- Health & Medicine
Two genes clear up psoriasis and eczema confusion
Psoriasis and eczema are often mistaken for each other, leading to mistreatment. Testing just two genes could eliminate this confusion.
- Environment
Decline in birds linked to common insecticide
In addition to harming bee populations, neonicotinoid insecticides may also be detrimental to bug-eating birds.
- Cosmology
Lab version of early universe fails to solve lithium problem
An experiment that imitated conditions from just after the Big Bang failed to explain why observed amounts of lithium don’t match those expected from theory.
- Oceans
Saharan dust explains Bahamas’ paradoxical existence
Windswept dust from the Sahara Desert may fertilize bacteria that built the Bahamas.
- Anthropology
Clovis people may have hunted elephant-like prey, not just mammoths
The ancient American Clovis culture started out hunting elephant-like animals well south of New World entry points, finds in Mexico suggest.
- Neuroscience
Heavy marijuana use may affect dopamine response
People who regularly smoke five joints a day had dampened reactions to the chemical messenger dopamine.
- Neuroscience
Electrode turns consciousness on and off
Woman lost awareness, though appeared awake, when her brain was stimulated near an area called the claustrum.
- Physics
Diamonds under pressure impersonate exoplanet cores
Scientists use lasers at the National Ignition Facility to squeeze diamonds to the extreme pressures found inside massive exoplanets.
- Science & Society
An app to track firefly flashings
This summer, you can contribute to citizen science by tracking lightning bugs in your backyard.
- Life
Chemical evidence paved way for discovery of early life
The discovery in 1964 of compounds related to chlorophyll in billion-year-old rocks pushed back the timing of life’s origins.
- Animals
Parchment worms are best pinched in the dark
Meek tube-dwelling worms have strange glowing mucus and build papery tubes.
- Health & Medicine
Boot camp bug
Adenoviruses, which cause respiratory illnesses including some colds, plague boot camps.
- Health & Medicine
HIV reemerges in ‘cured’ child
The discovery spotlights limits in detecting the clandestine germ and raises questions about whether HIV can ever truly be cured.
- Materials Science
‘Stuff Matters’ explores the science behind everyday objects
Author Mark Miodownik explores why everyday materials look and behave the way they do.
