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Humans are often generous, but cooperation unravels when others take advantage of them. Many people punish such 'free riders', even if they do not benefit personally, and this 'altruistic punishment' sustains cooperation.
The processes that lead to charge separation in the atmosphere during a thunderstorm are largely mysterious. So Daedalus wants to build a large-scale lightning machine to test the most popular theories.
It is increasingly evident that bacterial cells cooperate for many purposes. New results show that the bacterium Enterococcus uses cell–cell signalling to coordinate toxin production.
Ultracold atoms held in a three-dimensional pattern by a web of light beams can now be switched from a superfluid to an insulating state. This achievement may be useful for performing quantum computations.
The p53 protein works to suppress cancer, so one might think that bumping up the levels of this protein would be a good idea. But this isn't so — mice with too much p53 age prematurely.
The usefulness of helium-3 as a probe of the early Universe has been in doubt. A rethink of stellar theory and new observational data put those doubts to rest.
The origin of magnetic fields found in galaxies and galaxy clusters is unknown. Both models and observations suggest that extinct radio galaxies could be responsible.
The auditory system transforms information from one frame of reference into another to create a map of space in the brain. The source of a visual signal that guides this transformation in barn owls has now been found.
