Scientists, like athletes, are obsessed with experiencing the thrill of victory. Just as they fear the agony of defeat. And in the wide world of science, thrills make news much more often than the agony. Winners get the publicity, losers can’t get published. But sometimes the defeats deserve to make news too, especially when highly […]
During long summer days, kelp forests in high-latitude waters could create little safe zones for sea creatures in acidifying oceans, new research shows. Sunlight stretching on for most or all of a day keeps kelps and other big algae working overtime, trapping solar energy through photosynthesis. In the Arctic, kelps pulled enough carbon dioxide from […]
A case for genetic drinking Whether one drinks at all, how much and how often are partly due to heredity, [according to a Finnish study of 902 male twins].… A genetic element in alcoholism “seems highly plausible,” [researchers] said.… Surprisingly, genes also have much to do with creating an abstainer. Lack of control — which […]
Whether you call them caribou or reindeer, Rangifer tarandus around the world are on the decline. There are about 2.5 million of these animals scattered in more than 20 populations across the Arctic, and most of those populations are shrinking. And scientists largely don’t know why. Count the world’s largest population of reindeer, occupying the […]
Spewing too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could shut down the major ocean current that ferries warm water to the North Atlantic, new climate simulations suggest. While not as extreme as the doomsday scenario portrayed in the movie The Day After Tomorrow, such a shutdown could cause wintertime temperatures to plummet by an estimated […]
NEW ORLEANS — A newfound way of delivering oxygen in animal circulatory systems depends mostly on food sloshing back and forth in the guts. This discovery came in sea spiders, or pycnogonids, which can look like legs in search of a body. Their spookily long legs hold stretches of digestive tract, which wouldn’t fit inside […]
Hoverboards and certain cell phones powered by lithium-ion batteries occasionally go up in flames. Scientists now have a new plan for squelching these fires before they flare out of control: incorporating a flame retardant in the battery that’s released if temperatures get too toasty. Within lithium-ion batteries, ions travel between positive and negative electrodes through […]
Below the shimmering turquoise waters of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula lies the scene of a prehistoric mass murder. In a geologic instant, most animal and plant species perished. Drilling through hundreds of meters of rock, investigators have finally reached the footprint left by the accused: Earth’s most notorious space rock impact, Chicxulub. The dinosaur killer. Sleuthing […]
Dragonfish are the stuff of nightmares with their oversized jaws and rows of fanglike teeth. The deep sea creatures may be only several centimeters long, but they can trap and swallow sizable prey. How these tiny terrors manage to open their mouths so wide has puzzled scientists, until now. In most fish, the skull is […]
A new estimate of how fast the universe is expanding supports one side of an ongoing debate, favoring a more rapid expansion. Observations of type 1a supernovas imply a faster expansion rate (known as the Hubble constant) than studies of the cosmic microwave background — light that originated early in cosmic history (SN: 8/6/2016, p. […]