Category Archives: news briefs

The famous 5,000-year-old iceman nicknamed “Otzi” died fighting, researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia told the BBC. Found in the Italian Alps in 1991, Otzi’s discovery made headlines around the world because his frozen remains were almost perfectly … Continue reading →

Having a problem with hornets bothering you at the family picnic? Perhaps it’s the perfume you’re wearing — or even the food you’re eating. Masato Ono of Tamagawa University in Tokyo and colleagues report in the August 7 Nature that … Continue reading →

More than 30 years ago, research by psychologist Stanley Milgram suggested that any person on the planet can be connected to any other person by an average of six social ties. This “small-world hypothesis” with its famed “six degrees of … Continue reading →

No, walking on water is not a miracle, at least not for the small insects known as water striders. But even for striders, the ability has remained mysterious — until now. John W. M. Bush and his colleagues from the … Continue reading →

Want your children to remember their vocabulary lists? Perhaps you should make them take music lessons. Music training improves verbal memory in children, according to a study published in the July issue of Neuropsychology. Agnes S. Chan, a psychologist at … Continue reading →

At the Insect Olympics, the froghopper, also known as the spittlebug, has just set the world record for the high jump. The tiny, thumbtack-sized insect can reach heights of 70 centimeters (more than 2 feet), equivalent to a man leaping … Continue reading →

The sky is rising and human-caused changes in ozone and greenhouse gases are largely to blame, say researchers in the July 25 Science. The height of the tropopause — the boundary between the stratosphere and the troposphere, the atmosphere’s lowest … Continue reading →

Last year, it seemed as if the entire planet revolved around Ozzy Osbourne, and now there’s a scientific explanation (if the Oz were a gargantuan exploding ball of hydrogen, that is). Stars rich in iron, nickel, and other metallic elements … Continue reading →

Poems are duking it out in a Darwinian sense on David Rea’s website. He’s designed a computer program that allows poems to evolve. Starting with 1,000 random words culled from “Hamlet,” “Beowulf,” and the “Iliad,” among others, his program randomly … Continue reading →

Some women just give and give to the men in their lives, never getting anything but the fuzzy end of the lollipop in return. And so do the females of the semi-aquatic insect species known as the Zeus bug. In … Continue reading →