Category Archives: news briefs

Everyone knows that friendship is good for you: strong social bonds are important to health, both mental and physical. But it now looks like it’s also good for your children: Researchers have shown a direct link between having friends and … Continue reading →

To the disappointment of future lunar colonists everywhere, the moon may have much less water than previously thought. Observations from NASA’s Lunar Prospector orbiter a few years back had fueled hopes that thick layers of ice, which could have been … Continue reading →

Prehistoric Alaska once teemed with woolly mammoths, large bison, and wild horses. Then, about 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, about 70 percent of North America’s large mammal population mysteriously disappeared — including all the existing horse species. (The Americas remained … Continue reading →

Here’s another reason mad cow disease might keep you up at night. It turns out that there might be a small chance of contracting the human version, known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), through routine surgery. Both mad cow and CJD … Continue reading →

Is there anything more annoying than having something stuck in your teeth? It looks like our oldest human ancestors may have been bothered by the exact same feeling. Paleontologists have been puzzled by the tiny grooves discovered on fossilized hominid … Continue reading →

The Voyager 1 space probe, launched in 1977, is now more than 8 billion miles from Earth, but whether it has actually left the outer limits of the solar system is still a matter of debate. In the Nov. 6 … Continue reading →

Roosters have a “sperm budget” and can be picky in allocating their limited resources, Tommaso Pizzari and his colleagues at the University of Leeds report in the Nov. 6 Nature. They have discovered that roosters give more sperm to a … Continue reading →

It appears that “Supermom” has a basis in fact. According to a study published in Physiology and Behavior, neuroscientist Craig Kinsley of the University of Richmond has found that motherhood makes females calmer when provoked and more courageous. Kinsley said … Continue reading →

Pterosaurs, the now-extinct flying reptiles that once dominated the skies (and bad caveman movies), may have been accomplished and agile aerial predators, report researchers in the Oct. 30 Nature. Lawrence Witmer of the University of Ohio and his colleagues ran … Continue reading →

Female wolf spiders, being of a practical nature, commonly eat their suitors. Eileen Hebets, a Cornell University researcher, has some advice for the males who’d like to better their chances of surviving a tryst: Perhaps an introduction might be in … Continue reading →