SAN DIEGO — A remote planet — the first with hints of a limestone shell — has been shredded by its dead sun, a new study suggests. A generous heaping of carbon is raining down on a white dwarf, the exposed core of a dead star, astrophysicist Carl Melis of the University of California, San ... Read more
The Rev. Thomas Bayes was, as the honorific the Rev. suggests, a clergyman. Too bad he wasn’t a lawyer. Maybe if he had been, lawyers today wouldn’t be so reluctant to enlist his mathematical insights in the pursuit of justice. In many sorts of court cases, from whether talcum powder causes ovarian cancer to The ... Read more
The surveillance video shows a peaceful city streetscape: People walking, cars driving, birds chirping. “Then, abruptly, there’s the sound of gunfire,” said electrical engineer Robert Maher. “A big bang followed by another bang.” Witnesses saw two shooters facing off, a few meters apart — one aiming north, the other south. But no one knew who shot first. ... Read more
When mice have a stroke, their gut reaction can amp up brain damage. A series of new experiments reveals a surprising back-and-forth between the brain and the gut in the aftermath of a stroke. In mice, this dickering includes changes to the gut microbial population that ultimately lead to even more inflammation in the brain. ... Read more
The brain doesn’t really go out like a light when anesthesia kicks in. Nor does neural activity gradually dim, a new study in monkeys reveals. Rather, intermittent flickers of brain activity appear as the effects of an anesthetic take hold. Some synchronized networks of brain activity fall out of step as the monkeys gradually drift ... Read more
Tree frog tadpoles are the ultimate escape artists. To avoid becoming breakfast, the embryos of red-eyed tree frogs (Agalychnis callidryas) prematurely hatch and wriggle away from a snake’s jaws in mere seconds, as seen above. Embryos also use this maneuver to flee from flooding, deadly fungi, egg-eating wasps and other threats. Adding to the drama, ... Read more
CHICAGO — Cooling stars could shine some light on the nature of dark matter. Certain types of stars are cooling faster than scientists expect. New research suggests that the oddity could hint at the presence of hypothetical particles known as axions. Such particles have also been proposed as a candidate for dark matter, the unknown ... Read more
Some guys really know how to kill a moment. Among Mediterranean fish called ocellated wrasse (Symphodus ocellatus), single males sneak up on mating pairs in their nest and release a flood of sperm in an effort to fertilize some of the female’s eggs. But female fish may safeguard against such skullduggery through their ovarian fluid, ... Read more
WASHINGTON — To human thinking, songbird nests now seem to have evolved backwards: The most distant ancestor probably built complex, roofed structures. Simple open-top cup nests came later. More than 70 percent of songbird species today build some form of that iconic open cup, evolutionary biologist Jordan Price said August 18 at the North American ... Read more
Scientists have identified the “refrigerator” nerve cells that hum along in the brains of mice and keep the body cool. These cells kick on to drastically cool mice’s bodies and may prevent high fevers, scientists report online August 25 in Science. The results “are totally new and very important,” says physiologist Andrej Romanovsky of the ... Read more