All Stories by Stephen Ornes
- Animals
Quieter vibes for city spiders
How much a web vibrates affects how well a spider senses when that web has captured prey. But webs attached to concrete, plastic and other artificial materials vibrate less than do those built on natural materials, such as twigs or leaves.
- Microbes
Return of the giant zombie virus
Scientists have discovered a new type of virus in Siberian soils. It's the largest virus ever discovered. And guess what: It could infect cells even after 30,000 years in cold storage.
- Space
Waves from the birth of time
Inflation is the idea that in the split-second after the Big Bang, the universe exploded into huge-ness. Although the hypothesis is 30 years old, evidence to confirm it had been lacking. Until now.
- Physics
Laser tweezers grab nano bits
An optical fiber, a bit of gold and a laser make up a new type of tweezers. Scientists may soon use it to pick up and move around individual viruses or proteins.
- Health & Medicine
Low protein, longer life — for some
Eating less protein can lengthen life and improve health. That’s the message from new studies in mice and in people.
- Environment
Burning to learn
Fires cause billions of dollars of destruction to homes and forests every year. But not all fires are bad, especially for forests. With a better understanding of fire, scientists can both help people prevent dangerous fires — and identify which ones it would be better to let burn.
- Environment
Explainer: How and why fires burn
A fire’s colorful flame results from a chemical reaction known as combustion.
- Animals
Passing diseases from bee to bee
A study finds that the viruses and parasites that plague honeybees can infect bumblebees too, sickening another important pollinator.
- Health & Medicine
Simple test for cancer and heart disease
Disease diagnosis often requires expensive equipment and tests to probe deep inside the body. But a new test relies on a fast, cheap and easy technique. And its answers appear on a strip of paper — just as they do on a pregnancy test.
- Brain
Mapping the brain’s highways
A new map may explain why some brain injuries are worse than others. Even relatively minor injuries that disrupt message superhighways may have a more devastating impact than some seemingly catastrophic injuries.
- Animals
‘Crazy’ ant fight
By neutralizing the poison produced by fire ants, ‘crazy’ ants can survive heated battles. And that may help explain why crazy ants are edging out fire ants in parts of the southern United States.
- Animals
Flower loss doomed the mammoths
Woolly mammoths roamed the Arctic until about 10,000 years ago. Why they died out may trace to the vanishing of the mostly flowering plants on which they had been dining.
