Tiny Wonders: Beauty in Miniature
Microscopic scenes from our amazing planet, Nikon’s Small World competition reveals more than meets the eye.
View ArticleTiny Beauties: Visions From Under the Microscope
The folks at Olympus know a thing or two about what makes a pretty picture. One thing they appreciate is that the most striking images are often the ones that are too small to see. That’s why they’re...
View ArticleDenizens of the Deep: Alexander Semenov’s Pictures of Undersea Creatures
Growing up in Russia, Alexander Semenov was fascinated by the undersea world. For most of us, a few trips to the aquarium and the occasional scuba dive would be enough to scratch that itch. But Semenov...
View ArticleSolved! The Mystery of the Maddening Itch
O.K., so it doesn’t quite rank up there with unraveling the cause of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. But with mosquito and poison-ivy season on the way, plenty of folks would be grateful for an...
View ArticleWhat Open-Air Nuclear Tests Tell Us About the Brain
In 1953, the man known during his lifetime only as H.M. underwent neurosurgery to cure his severe epilepsy. The operation inadvertently destroyed most of his hippocampus, a brain structure nobody...
View ArticleViral Beast: Meet the Supersized Pandoravirus
Claire Abergel is on vacation this week on Canada’s Gaspe Peninsula, but for some scientists, there’s no such thing as pure play. At some point she’ll make her way over to the Saint Lawrence River to...
View ArticleHow the Moon Messes With Your Sleep
We are all, quite literally, lunatics—and I mean that in the nicest way possible. It is the moon, after all, that is responsible for the luna part of that word—and the moon has always made us at least...
View ArticleCreating False Memories in Mice Brains—and in Yours
Every memory you ever had is in some respects a hallucination. You can see a scene, feel a feeling, even smell a smell at a time and in a context in which they didn’t occur at all. That’s both good...
View ArticleYour Tiny Roommates: Meet the Microbes Living in Your Home
There’s no such thing as living alone. Never mind if you’re the only person in your house and have no dog, no cat, not even fish. You’ve still got at least several billion roommates—and so do we all....
View ArticleMemories Can Now Be Created — And Erased — in a Lab
Two recently published studies describe scientists implanting fabricated memories and selectively erasing unwanted memories in the brains of lab rodents. Researchers at UC Irvine have found that by...
View ArticleDouble Nobel Prize-Winning Biochemist Frederick Sanger Dies at 95
Frederick Sanger, a British biochemist who twice won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, died Tuesday. He was 95, the Associated Press reports. The revered scientist died in his sleep at Addenbrooke’s...
View ArticleUnusual Ice Circle Forms in North Dakota River
(BISMARCK, N.D.) — When George Loegering saw a large spinning circle of ice in the Sheyenne River while out hunting with relatives, the retired engineer couldn’t believe his eyes. “At first I thought,...
View ArticleRoot Rot Threatens Traditional Christmas Fir Trees
(BAKERSVILLE, N.C.) — Jeff Pollard trudged up the steep slope and stopped at a desiccated, rust-brown tree. Two months earlier, workers had tagged this Fraser fir as ready for market. It was going to...
View ArticleAncient Human Genes Cause New Confusion For Science
When Matthias Meyer began studying the ancient DNA in the 400,000 year old fossils he found in the Sima de los Huesos, or Pit of Bones cave, deep beneath the Atapuerca mountains in Spain, he was pretty...
View ArticleHow Cuddling Saves Tiny Babies
Babies are less obvious creatures than they seem. Yes, their list of demands is short and straightforward: they need food, sleep and frequent diaper changes. And they make their wishes known in an...
View Article2014 Is the International Year of Crystallography (‘What’s Crystallography?’...
There once was a dark and distant time when we only understood molecules as equations of letters and numbers. With the advent of crystallography — the science of how matter is arranged — we learned how...
View ArticleHow Life Began: New Clues From New Worlds
The odds that the universe is bursting with life seem to be getting better all the time. Astronomers recently announced that there could be an astonishing 20 billion Earthlike planets in the Milky...
View ArticleWhat Should You Do With the World’s Most Powerful Laser? Study Proteins,...
Forget about making James Bond wince or shooting down drones, scientists have found a much more appropriate use for the world’s most powerful laser — understanding proteins. Researchers have employed...
View ArticleHow to Know If Someone’s Really Dead
Correction added Feb. 28, 2014 Dead is dead—except when it isn’t. That’s the lesson 78-year old Walter Williams of Holmes County, Miss., learned late Wednesday night when he woke up in a body bag on an...
View ArticleVirus Resurrected After Chilling in Siberia for 30,000 years
French scientists are celebrating after successfully revitalizing an ancient virus that had been lying dormant for 30,000 years in Siberian permafrost, according to the BBC. Measuring 1.5 micrometers...
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