Breaking Stories

Asking "What Would Nature Do?" Leads to a Way to Break Down a Greenhouse Gas
From Today's Issue
A recent discovery in understanding how to chemically break down the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into a useful form opens the doors for scientists to wonder what organism is out there to accomplish the task. Researchers have now figured out a way to efficiently turn carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide using visible light, like sunlight.

Scientists Find Signs of "Snowball Earth" Amidst Early Animal Evolution
From the 03.08.10 Issue
Geologists have found evidence that sea ice extended to the equator 716.5 million years ago, bringing new precision to a "snowball Earth" event long suspected to have taken place around that time. The new findings--based on an analysis of ancient tropical rocks that are now found in remote northwestern Canada--bolster the theory that our planet has, at times in the past, been ice-covered at all latitudes.

Methane Releases From Arctic Shelf May Be Much Larger and Faster Than Anticipated
From the 03.05.10 Issue
A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to the findings of an international research team led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov.

Dinosaurs Might Be Older Than Previously Thought
From the 03.04.10 Issue
Paleontologists announced the discovery of a dinosaur-like animal--one that shared many characteristics with dinosaurs but fell just outside of the dinosaur family tree--living 10 million years earlier than the oldest known dinosaurs. The researchers conclude that dinosaurs and other close relatives such as pterosaurs (flying reptiles) might have also lived much earlier than previously thought.

Fossil Snake From India Fed On Hatchling Dinosaurs
From the 03.03.10 Issue
The remains of an extraordinary fossil unearthed in 67-million-year-old sediments from Gujarat, western India provide a rare glimpse at an unusual feeding behavior in ancient snakes.

Antifreeze Proteins Can Stop Ice Melt
From the 03.02.10 Issue
The same antifreeze proteins that keep organisms from freezing in cold environments also can prevent ice from melting at warmer temperatures. Antifreeze proteins are found in insects, fish, bacteria and other organisms that need to survive in cold temperatures. These proteins protect the organisms by arresting the growth of ice crystals in their bodies. The new study not only has implications for understanding this process in nature, but also for understanding the superheating of crystals in technologies that use superconductor materials and nanoparticles.

Stickleback Genomes Shining Bright Light on Evolution
From the 03.01.10 Issue
Researchers now know many of the genomic regions that allowed an ocean-dwelling fish to adapt to fresh water in several independently evolved populations. The discovery involved threespine stickleback fish taken from three land-locked freshwater Alaskan lakes and two ocean populations. They found that all of the fish were closely related in most of their genomes, but with differences in very specific regions.

Water May Not Run Uphill, But it Practically Flies Off New Surface
From the 02.26.10 Issue
Engineering researchers have crafted a flat surface that refuses to get wet. They have achieved a "nearly perfect hydrophobic interface" by reproducing, on small bits of flat plastic, the shape and patterns of the minute hairs that grow on the bodies of spiders.

New Dinosaur Discovered Head First
From the 02.25.10 Issue
A team of paleontologists has discovered a new dinosaur species they're calling Abydosaurus, which belongs to the group of gigantic, long-necked, long-tailed, four-legged, plant-eating dinosaurs such as Brachiosaurus. In a rare twist, they recovered four heads -- two still fully intact -- from a quarry in Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah. Complete skulls have been recovered for only eight of more than 120 known varieties of sauropod. Analysis of the bones indicates that the closest relative of Abydosaurus is Brachiosaurus, which lived 45 million years earlier.

Simple Math Explains Dramatic Beak Shape Variation in Darwin's Finches
From the 02.24.10 Issue
From how massive humpbacks glide through the sea with ease to the efficient way fungal spores fly, applied mathematicians have excavated the equations behind a variety of complex phenomena. The latest numerical feat zeroes in on perhaps the most famous icon of evolution: the beaks of Darwin's finches.

Biologists Use Mathematics to Advance Our Understanding of Health and Disease
From the 02.23.10 Issue
Math models help scientists reason across scales in biology, such as from interactions between sick and healthy people to the spread of global pandemics. John Tyson, professor of biology at Virginia Tech, is creating such models to discover how cells process information and make decisions.

Electric Avenue: Electric Cars on a Two-Way Street?
From the 02.22.10 Issue
A National Science Foundation-funded team explores plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) that not only use grid electricity to meet their power needs, but also use the car's potential to store electricity from the wind or sun, or feed electricity back into the grid, earning money for the owner.

Biologists Discover How Biological Clock Controls Cell Division in Bacteria
From the 02.19.10 Issue
New research provides important clues to how the biological clocks of bacteria and other "prokaryotic" cells. A team of biologists has unraveled the biochemistry of how bacteria so precisely time cell division, a key element in understanding how all organisms from bacteria to humans use their biological clocks to control basic cellular functions.

Scientists Image Brain at Point When Vocal Learning Begins
From the 02.18.10 Issue
In the first experiment of its kind, scientists employed high-resolution imaging to examine the brains of juvenile songbirds right after they heard an adult tutors' song for the first time. Specifically, they wanted to see what happened to the connections between nerve cells, or synapses, in a part of the brain where the motor commands for song are thought to originate.

For Nanowires, Nothing Sparkles Quite Like Diamond
From the 02.17.10 Issue
Diamonds are renowned for their seemingly flawless physical beauty and their interplay with light. Now researchers are taking advantage of the mineral's imperfections to control that light at the atomic scale, generating one photon at a time. A team of engineers and applied physicists has sculpted a novel nanowire from diamond crystal and shown that the wire can act as a source of single photons.

Biologist Discovers 'Stop' Signal in Honey Bee Communication
From the 02.16.10 Issue
A biologist at UC San Diego has discovered that honey bees warn their nest mates about dangers they encounter while feeding with a special signal that's akin to a "stop" sign for bees. The discovery resulted from a series of experiments on honey bees foraging for food that were attacked by competitors from nearby colonies fighting for food at an experimental feeder.

First Discovery of the Female Hormone Progesterone in a Plant
From the 02.08.10 Issue
Scientists have discovered the female sex hormone progesterone in a walnut tree, shaking up what's known about the different between plants and animals. Until now, scientists thought that only animals could make progesterone. A steroid hormone secreted by the ovaries, progesterone prepares the uterus for pregnancy and maintains pregnancy. A synthetic version, progestin, is used in birth control pills and other medications.

Two New Fossil Rodents Discovered in Utah
From the 02.05.10 Issue
A newly-published report describes the discovery of two new prehistoric rodents in Utah. The report also identifies two fossil rodents and a rabbit previously known from other states. All are from a site near Sevier in central Utah.

Excessive Internet Use is Linked to Depression
From the 02.04.10 Issue
Researchers found striking evidence that some Internet users have developed a compulsive Internet habit, whereby they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites. The results suggest that this type of addictive surfing can have a serious impact on mental health.

Evolution Impacts Environment, Study Finds
From the 02.03.10 Issue
Biologists have long known that ecology, the interaction between organisms and their environment, plays a significant role in forming new species and in modifying living ones. The traditional view is that ecology shapes evolution. The environment defines a template for the process of evolution: natural selection shapes organisms to fit that template. Some studies suggest, however, that evolutionary processes reciprocate by influencing ecology.

Novel Studies of Decomposition Shed New Light On Our Earliest Fossil Ancestry
From the 02.02.10 Issue
Decaying corpses are usually the domain of forensic scientists, but paleontologists have discovered that studying rotting fish sheds new light on our earliest ancestry.

Dinosaur Discovery Helps Solve Piece of Evolutionary Puzzle
From the 02.01.10 Issue
Through an expedition to the Gobi Desert of China, scientists have solved the puzzle of how one group of dinosaurs came to look like birds. The discovery extends the fossil record of the family Alvarezsauridae - a bizarre group of bird-like dinosaurs with a large claw on the hand and very short, powerful arms--back 63 million years, further distancing the group from birds on the evolutionary tree. Until now, there was no direct evidence that dinosaurs of this type lived during the Late Jurassic, some 160 million years ago.

Running Shoes Changed How Humans Run
From the 01.29.10 Issue
New research has found that people who run barefoot, or in minimal footwear, tend to avoid "heel-striking," and instead land on the ball of the foot or the middle of the foot. In so doing, these runners use the architecture of the foot and leg and some clever Newtonian physics to avoid hurtful and potentially damaging impacts, equivalent to two to three times body weight, that shod heel-strikers repeatedly experience.

A Flare for Forecasting: Sun Seismology Points to Better Solar Weather Predictions
From the 01.28.10 Issue
A team of solar scientists says it has improved on approaches that predict the eruption of solar flares, violent bursts of energy that can damage satellites, endanger astronauts in orbit and even threaten the power grid on the ground. Space agencies, airlines, satellite operators and power utilities would like to have access to better forecasts of all kinds of space weather-the charged particles and streams of radiation spewed out in irregular burps and blasts by the sun.

Geoscientists Drill Deepest Hole in Ocean Crust in Scientific Ocean Drilling History
From the 01.27.10 Issue
At present 10 percent of the world's population lives within 10 meters of sea level. Current climate models predict a 50-centimeter to more than one-meter rise in sea level over the next 100 years, posing a threat to inhabitants of low-lying coastal communities around the world.