Category Archives: news briefs

The scientific basis for springtime is now better understood, thanks to a new study from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding in Germany and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Reporting in the Feb. 13 Science, Federico Valverde … Continue reading →

An international team of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope has found the first planet outside our solar system with detectable oxygen and carbon in its atmosphere. But the possibility of extraterrestrial life is pretty slim. Planet HD 209458b (nicknamed … Continue reading →

To help make safer and cheaper rocket fuel, the US military has enlisted some pretty small soldiers — bacteria. Funded by the Office of Naval Research, microbiologist John Frost of Michigan State University and his team reported in a recent … Continue reading →

Natalia Dmitrieva of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and her colleagues have shown that high concentrations of salt can damage DNA and the cellular mechanisms that would otherwise repair it. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy … Continue reading →

Physicists from the University of Colorado at Boulder recently created a brand-new form of matter — the sixth, after solids, liquids, gases, plasmas and Bose-Einstein condensates — that could lead to more efficient power plants, faster and smaller computers, and … Continue reading →

The remains of the earliest-known land-living animal have been discovered — not by a famous paleontologist but by Scottish bus driver and amateur fossil hunter Mike Newman. Newman found the tiny fossilized millipede in the Scottish seaside town of Stonehaven … Continue reading →

It’s been commonly assumed that American ecosystems remained pristine until the arrival of European settlers, who, by cutting down forests, introducing foreign species, and polluting the environment, disturbed the indigenous flora and fauna. But prehistoric Native Americans also altered their … Continue reading →

Unless you’re a character in a Jules Verne novel, journeying to the center of the earth remains impossible. So researchers interested in understanding the still somewhat mysterious inner workings of our planet’s iron-rich core must obtain their information indirectly, for … Continue reading →

To the dismay of many would-be Dr. Dolittles who’d like nothing more than to talk to the animals, new research suggests that the ensuing conversation might not be particularly sparkling. Marc D. Hauser of Harvard University and W. Tecumseh Fitch … Continue reading →

Who knew? Your favorite tennis star may also be a master of Bayesian probability theory, according to a study in the Jan. 15 Nature. Konrad P. Kording and Daniel M. Wolpert of University College London report that the sort of … Continue reading →