A DNA-damaging protein in typhoid bacteria might keep infected animals alive and provide a safe haven for the microbes. Typhoid toxin, a protein produced by the typhoid fever-causing bacterium Salmonella enterica Typhi, tears DNA molecules apart. But the protein actually prolonged survival and reduced gut inflammation in mice infected with S. enterica, an international team […]

ATLANTA — Iceland’s “woman in blue,” the partial skeleton of a young woman found in 1938 in a grave with Viking-era objects, was a child of some of the island’s earliest settlers, researchers reported April 14 at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Tooth development and wear suggest she was between […]

The grunts, moans and wobbles of gelada monkeys, a chatty species residing in Ethiopia’s northern highlands, observe a universal mathematical principle seen until now only in human language. The new research, published online April 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sheds light on the evolution of primate communication and complex human […]

Physicists may soon know if a potential new subatomic particle is something beyond their wildest dreams — or if it exists at all. Hints of the new particle emerged last December at the Large Hadron Collider. Theorists have churned out hundreds of papers attempting to explain the existence of the particle —assuming it’s not a […]

Good gut bacteria might not help people with Crohn’s disease. Protective microbial messages go unread in mice and in human immune cells with certain defective genes, researchers report online May 5 in Science. The findings are the first to tie together the roles of genes and beneficial microbes in the inflammatory bowel disease, says biologist […]

Mercury has never looked better. Volcanic plains, craters, mountains and valleys are showcased in the first complete topographic map of the innermost planet, released May 6. Stitched together from over 100,000 images taken by NASA’s now-defunct MESSENGER spacecraft, the global catalog of landscapes provide data that researchers can use to better understand the history and […]

Sure, mosquitoes spread Zika virus. Scientists have already identified the yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) as a major spreader in the Americas of Zika and its risk of birth defects and possible paralysis. But Ae. aegypti may not be the only culprit. Recent evidence raises concerns that a relative, the Asian tiger mosquito (Ae. albopictus), […]

Ocean spicinessOH-shuhn SPĪ-sē-nes n.Relative temperature and salinity variations within seawater of the same density. Warmer, saltier ocean water is considered spicy while cooler, fresher water is minty. Climate change will spice up the Arctic Ocean, researchers report in the April Journal of Physical Oceanography. Seawater that is both salty and cold is the most dense, […]

In at least one part of Stone Age Europe, Neandertals were lords of the rings. Humankind’s close evolutionary cousins built large, circular structures out of stalagmites in a French cave around 176,500 years ago, researchers say. Neandertal groups explored the cave’s dark recesses, where they assembled stalagmite pieces into complex configurations, archaeologist Jacques Jaubert of […]

Ask a computer to pick a random number and you’ll probably get a response that isn’t completely unpredictable. Because they are deterministic automatons, computers struggle to generate numbers that are truly random. But a new advance on a method known as a randomness extractor makes it easier for machines to roll the dice, generating truly […]