Monthly Archives: February 2004

The Beagle 2 Mars lander may be lost, but British archeologists may have found the original ship it was named after. Charles Darwin’s observations during his voyage aboard HMS Beagle in the 1830s were crucial in helping him formulate the … Continue reading →

Researchers have developed a powerful new method to peer inside cells and tissues. As reported in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition, Stephan Thiberge of Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science and his colleagues have come … Continue reading →

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has recorded yet another dramatic image of the universe around us, this time the death throes of a fading supernova. Called SN 1987A, the brightest stellar explosion of modern times was discovered by astronomers 17 years … Continue reading →

Dogs have an uncanny knack for understanding human gestures — and we may have helped them evolve it. Previous research by Harvard anthropologist Brian Hare demonstrated that domesticated canines interpret human cues such as glances or pointing better than our … Continue reading →

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 →