News Articles

While school-age models of atomic nuclei show them as being spherical, like a basketball, they are more like the shape of a football. 
Yet for some particular combinations of protons and neutrons, nuclei can also assume very asymmetric shapes, like a pear, where there is more mass at one end of the nucleus than the other. 

Men who experience sexual harassment are far more likely than women to induce vomiting and take laxatives and diuretics - purging - in an attempt to control their weight, according to a new psychology paper.

The African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) and Budgett's frog (Lepidobatrachus laevis) differ in diet and last shared a common ancestor about 110 million years ago but what they were found to have in common could help researchers on the path to prevention of intestinal birth defects. 
Like most tadpoles, Xenopus exist primarily on a diet of algae, and their long, simple digestive tracts are not able to process insects or proteins until they become adult frogs. Budgett's is an aggressive species of frog which is carnivorous – and cannibalistic – in the tadpole stage.

During the late Pleistocene, which ended about 12,000 years ago, a remarkably diverse assemblage of large-bodied mammals inhabited the "mammoth steppe," a cold and dry environment that extended from western Europe through northern Asia and across the Bering land bridge to the Yukon.
Of the large predators - wolves, bears, and big cats - only the wolves and bears were able to maintain their ranges well after the end of the last ice age and a new study suggests that dietary flexibility may have been an important factor giving wolves and bears an edge over saber-toothed cats and cave lions. 

When comparing men and women who have dyslexia to non-dyslexic control groups, researchers found significant differences in brain anatomy, suggesting that the disorder may have a different brain-based manifestation when it comes to gender.

The greater wax moth (Galleria mellonella of the family Pyralidae) is capable of sensing sound frequencies of up to 300 kHz, making it possessor of the highest recorded frequency sensitivity of any animal in the natural world.
Humans are only capable of hearing sounds from 20 Hz up to around 20 kHz maximum and that drops as we age, while our pets can hear at higher frequencies (leading to concern about things like the hum from ballasts in CFL bulbs) but even dolphins, famous for their ultrasound, only cap out at around 160 kHz.

If you are not an experienced baseball player, a ball coming at you 40 or 50 miles per hour is fast. You are almost certain to swing too late and then, when you realize that is fast, you will swing too early. You are almost as certain to miss.
So how can players hit a 95 M.P.H. fastball?  Given that it can be inside or outside of the strike zone, high or low, and also is rarely straight, it can be difficult even for them.
Researchers say they have pinpointed how the brain tracks such fast-moving objects and that can help understand how humans predict the trajectory of moving objects when it can take one-tenth of a second for the brain to process what the eye sees. 

If you are toughing out harsh winter weather, snow can be a relief. It's a respite from biting winds and subzero temperatures.
But winter and spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has declined in recent years, putting plants and animals that depend on the space beneath the snow to survive the blustery chill of winter at risk.

An estimated 5 percent of the U.S. population has restless legs syndrome, a disruptive, overwhelming nocturnal urge to move the legs even while sleeping, which can lead to many sleepless nights.
Why do patients with restless legs syndrome  still have insomnia when the condition is treated successfully with medication?

Combining Medicare's hospital, physician, and prescription drug coverage with private supplemental coverage into one health plan could save the government and seniors $180 billion over a decade, according to a new analysis from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and advocacy group The Commonwealth Fund. 
Under the proposed plan, called "Medicare Essential," Medicare costs would be $63 billion lower between 2014 and 2023, with total premium and out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries estimated to be 17 percent to 40 percent lower than current costs.

Species of gigantic animals that once roamed Australia were long gone by the time people arrived, a major review of the available evidence has concluded.
The research challenges the claim that humans were primarily responsible for the demise of the megafauna in a proposed "extinction window" between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago, and points the finger instead at climate change.

The Black Sea sediment record has a terrific variety of past plankton species that left behind their genetic makeup - the plankton paleome.
The semi-isolated Black Sea is highly sensitive to climate driven environmental changes, and the underlying sediments represent high-resolution archives of past continental climate and concurrent hydrologic changes in the basin. The brackish Black Sea is currently receiving salty Mediterranean waters via the narrow Strait of Bosphorus as well as freshwater from rivers and via precipitation.