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New fossil discoveries on Flores, Indonesia, bolster the evidence that Homo floresiensis was a dwarfed human species that lived at the end of the last ice age. But the species' evolutionary origins remain obscure.
A good look at the Deep Impact cometary encounter was taken by the Rosetta mission, itself on the way to a rendezvous with a comet in 2014. So what is a comet — icy dustball or dusty iceball?
‘Silence is golden’ is a maxim of limited applicability where stochastic resonance holds sway. The effect uses noise to boost signal output in certain systems — and has just been seen in oscillators on a very small scale.
The ‘insurance hypothesis’ holds that ecosystem diversity is a good thing because diversity confers overall stability in the face of stressful conditions. Experiments on grassland support that view.
Measurements of the X-ray afterglow of long γ-ray bursts largely clarified the origin of these bright flashes of cosmic radiation. Their shorter-lived siblings are now beginning to divulge their secrets, too.
Earth's oxygen levels increased slowly over a long and ill-defined transitional period around two billion years ago. A microbial ‘footprint’ from this era provides biological evidence to complement existing geological data.
A fungus and a bacterium have been found in a symbiotic alliance that attacks rice plants. Rice feeds more people than any other crop, but the significance of this finding extends beyond its potential agricultural use.
Two-dimensional polymers are potentially useful structures — if we could only understand their properties. Observations of one polymer's intricate, two-stage, melting transition may help us do just that.
Many pathogenic bacteria possess a secretion machine that shoots noxious proteins into host cells. But the ammunition is larger than the bore of the bacterial gun, so how is it fed into the machine?
The identification of a receptor for gibberellin, a plant signalling molecule, opens up new prospects for understanding plant growth and development. Not least, crop-selection programmes should benefit.
Why do cells of the same type, grown in the same conditions, look and behave so differently? Studying fluctuations in a well-characterized genetic pathway in yeast hints at how such variation arises.
Phytoplankton productivity depends on the replenishment of nutrients in ocean surface waters. An explanation for a region of strikingly low productivity invokes a little-considered aspect of the nutrient cycle.
The holes of mesoporous materials provide sheltered venues for many catalytic and adsorbent processes. A complex and beautiful crystalline germanate structure widens the scope of such materials.
