Latest Science News Winged robots may she

Robots that can flap their wings, hover and dart around like a fly could help scientists better understand the finer points of insect aviation, researchers report in the May 3 Science . 05.02.13 | more >>

Spending the first few years of life someplace other than the United States seems to protect against allergy and asthma. An analysis finds that children who were born elsewhere and moved to the U.S. are less prone to these immune ailments than U.S.-born kids. But for some allergic complaints, the mysterious protection weakens after long exposure to an American lifestyle, researchers report ... 05.02.13 | more >>

NEWS IN BRIEF Bone-eating worms produce chemicals to dissolve and feed on skeletons 05.02.13 | more >>

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Hunger turned horrifying among Colonial-era residents of Virginia’s Jamestown settlement. An analysis of a partial skull from a teenage girl unearthed last summer indicates that she was cannibalized after she died, scientists reported May 1 at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. 05.01.13 | more >>

A shattered windshield has a story to tell. The key to hearing it is counting the cracks.

The number of cracks that emerge in a plate of glass or Plexiglas relates to the speed of the object that broke it, researchers demonstrate April 26 in Physical Review Letters . This simple relationship could prove useful for forensic scientists , archeologists and even astronomers. 05.01.13 | more >>

NEWS IN BRIEF Tiny camera with 180 linked lenses captures panoramic views, could provide surveillance 05.01.13 | more >>

NEWS IN BRIEF Diminutive size came before specialized wings 05.01.13 | more >>

A virus that causes liver diseases in people may have infected birds that shared the planet with dinosaurs.

More than 82 million years ago, a hepatitis B virus infected an ancient bird and got stuck in its genome, a molecular version of a tar pit, researchers report April 30 in Nature Communications. Using fragments of DNA found in modern-day zebra finches, evolutionary biologist Alexander Suh and colleagues at the University of Münster in Germany pieced together a complete genome of the ancient ... 04.30.13 | more >>

NEWS IN BRIEF Storm dwarfs anything on Earth 04.30.13 | more >>

Honey is more than a sweet treat to bees. It turns out that it doses honeybees with certain compounds that switch on their detox defenses. 04.29.13 | more >>

A child who is good at learning math may literally have a head for numbers.

Kids’ brain structures and wiring are associated with how much their math skills improve after tutoring , researchers report April 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 04.29.13 | more >>

NEWS IN BRIEF While interesting, strange B meson's preference for matter over antimatter isn't enough to explain universe's existence 04.26.13 | more >>

NEWS IN BRIEF Shots-plus-booster strategy deemed ineffective in preventing infection 04.26.13 | more >>

The tobacco and fruit mixture smoked in public hookah bars might be considerably more dangerous than its pleasant scent would suggest. An analysis of people who smoked from water pipes three times a day finds that the pipes deliver more carbon monoxide and benzene, a carcinogen, than does smoking half a pack of cigarettes daily. 04.26.13 | more >>

The phrase “monkey see, monkey do” applies to humpback whales. Vervet monkeys and humpback whales both copy behaviors from their neighbors, researchers report April 25 in Science . The two studies suggest that, like humans, some wild animals pick up new habits from each other. 04.25.13 | more >>

Though climate change has knocked little birds called great tits out of sync with their chicks’ food supply, the birds are maintaining their population numbers, a new study finds. But the way the tits cope may give them only a temporary reprieve. 04.25.13 | more >>

Ancient Maya civilization was born of public rituals devised several thousand years ago as a result of mingling among groups spread across what’s now southern Mexico and Guatemala. 04.25.13 | more >>

The jittery, sweaty-palmed fear of losing money in the stock market leaves a signature in Google search data. Upticks in web searches for finance-related words such as debt , stocks and portfolio are good indicators of an impending downturn in the market, a new study shows. People enter such search terms less frequently before market gains, researchers report April 25 in Scientific Reports . 04.25.13 | more >>

NEWS IN BRIEF Shoemaker-Levy 9 supplied almost all of aqueous part of the planet's upper atmosphere 04.24.13 | more >>

NEWS IN BRIEF Fossils of avian ancestors show progressive redistribution of weight toward front 04.24.13 | more >>

Earthlings may owe a debt of gratitude to the enormous miniplanets that smashed into the planet in its youth. Such collisions might have knocked away much of the supply of chlorine concentrated on the planet’s surface, geochemists propose. Had that loss not occurred, the world’s oceans would have been too salty for complex life to thrive, they suggest. 04.24.13 | more >>