Hot water really can freeze faster than cold water, a new study finds. Sometimes. Under extremely specific conditions. With carefully chosen samples of water. sciencenewsNew experiments provide support for a special case of the counterintuitive Mpemba effect, which holds that water at a higher temperature turns to ice faster than cooler water. The Mpemba effect is named for a Tanzanian schoolboy,... 

Geologists have turned a series of 200 million-year-old lake-bed sediments into an epic narrative of the dinosaurs’ journey from ecological obscurity to Earthly supremacy, a mystery that has lingered even as their disappearance is explained. The dino path to dominance appears to have been cleared when the supercontinent Pangea cracked, setting off 600,000 years of volcanic activity that wiped out... 

Despite a penchant for hanging out in trees, human ancestors living 3.6 million years ago in what’s now Tanzania extended their legs to stride much like people today do, a new study finds. If so, walking may have evolved in leaps and bounds, rather than gradually, among ancient hominids. sciencenewsThe discovery comes from the famed trackway site in Laetoli, Tanzania, where more than 30 years ago... 

The Large Hadron Collider set a new record for the creation of energetic particle beams this morning. The particle accelerator, which surpassed Fermilab’s Tevatron in December as the baddest atom smasher of them all, smashed its own record, charging particles to 3.48 trillion electron volts. That’s three times the energy of any beam ever created by human beings and just a shade under half the... 

Paleontologists have stumbled across a scientific first that’s sure to inspire both fascination and disgust: coprolites, or fossilized fecal matter, bearing the distinct impressions of a creature’s teeth. sciencenews The coprolites — one chunk of rock is fist-sized, the other is about 30 percent larger — were discovered on a beach along the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, says Stephen Godfrey,... 

A bitter controversy is brewing over a captive colony of endangered Virginia big-eared bats, founded in November as a hedge against disease driving the species to extinction in the wild. Of 40 bats put in the colony, only 10 have survived. According to environmental activists and a consultant to the project, their demise wasn’t just an unfortunate consequence of the animals’ sensitivity, but a... 

The best thermal images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot yet captured have revealed surprising weather and temperature variation within the solar system’s most famous storm. The darkest red part of the spot turns out to be a warm patch inside the otherwise cold storm. The temperature variation is slight: “Warm” in this case translates to -250 degrees Fahrenheit while cold is an even frostier -256... 

A fierce attempt to keep endangered Virginia big-eared bats alive in captivity has shown just how difficult that noble task may be. The effort was prompted by the discovery of white nose syndrome, an extremely virulent disease that has killed more than a million bats since 2007, in one of the handful of caves where Virginia big-eared bats live. Of 40 bats moved to the Smithsonian National Zoo last... 

SALT LAKE CITY — Nearly two decades after vets began returning from the Middle East complaining of Gulf War Syndrome, the federal government has yet to formally accept that their vague jumble of symptoms constitutes a legitimate illness. Here, at the Society of Toxicology annual meeting, yesterday, researchers rolled out a host of brain images — various types of magnetic-resonance scans and brain-wave... 

Wind power has made incredible inroads into the U.S. energy system thanks to big, efficient machines standing hundreds of feet tall. But the future of wind power may be underground. In the abandoned mines and sandstones of the Midwest, compressed-air storage ventures are trying to convert the intermittent motions of the air into the kind of steady power that could displace coal. Compressed-air energy... 

An extra-tall wave struck a cruise ship off the Mediterranean coast of Spain this week, claiming two lives and injuring one person on board. Though the wave may not qualify as a “rogue wave,” it could have been created by the same forces. To officially be rogue, the wave’s height must be more than double the “significant wave height” of the area, which is calculated by averaging the height... 

The connection between gut bacteria and obesity has gained some weight, with new findings demonstrating links in mice among immune-system malfunction, bacterial imbalance and increased appetite. Mice with altered immune systems developed metabolic disorders and were prone to overeating. When microbes from their stomachs were transplanted into other mice, they also become obese. “This supports the... 

Prodigious plumes of planet-warming methane are bubbling from sediments across a broad region of Arctic seafloor previously thought to be sealed by permafrost, new analyses indicate. The resulting increase of methane gas in the atmosphere may accelerate climate warming, scientists say. sciencenewsThough immense amounts of carbon are known to be trapped in the peatlands of Siberia, a larger, often... 

Scientists have discovered 243-million-year-old fossils of dinosaurs’ closest relatives, pushing back the origin of dinosaurs by at least 10 million years. The dinosaur-like creature, Asilisaurus kongwe, was about the size of a Labrador retriever and had teeth and jawbones ideally shaped for eating plants, indicating it ate a mostly vegetarian diet. “This shows that the lineage leading to dinosaurs... 

Atrazine is receiving lots of attention for turning male frogs into girls, but that’s not all the common herbicide does. It also weakens amphibian immune systems, leaving the fragile creatures vulnerable to disease. Though less obvious than gender bending, immunosuppression could play just as large a part in the worldwide decline of amphibians, which have porous skin and easily absorb chemicals... 

Scientists have found a 67 million-year-old fossil of a snake coiled around dinosaur eggs and a hatchling. This is the first evidence of snakes eating dinosaurs. “It’s a stunning, once-in-a-lifetime find,” said paleontologist Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the study. “We’ve caught one of the rarest moments in the fossil record, which is prey and predator,... 

Long before human communication evolved into incessant tapping on computer keys, people scratched on eggshells. sciencenewsDon’t laugh—researchers say a cache of ostrich eggshells engraved with geometric designs demonstrates the existence of a symbolic communication system around 60,000 years ago among African hunter-gatherers. The unusually large sample of 270 engraved eggshell fragments, mostly... 

A new study has identified the best way to flash freeze living tissue, which could lead to better human egg and stem cell storage. The technique could dramatically improve the odds that frozen, unfertilized eggs could be thawed out and still be healthy enough to be fertilized. That would reduce how many eggs must be harvested, raising success rates and lowering the number of costly, painful procedures... 

Seen in the right light, yellow reef fish become spotty pains in the tail fin. sciencenewsMembers of one damselfish species use facial patterns of speckles and swooshes to identify the fish species they regularly attack, researchers report in an upcoming issue of Current Biology. These markings show up only in ultraviolet light, says visual ecologist Ulrike Siebeck of the University of Queensland... 

A painstaking, multidecade study of 33,000 individual trees may finally have uncovered the roots of biodiversity. That biodiversity’s origin needs uncovering is surprising because the word seems to be everywhere. But scientists still don’t quite understand why one place has more species than another, or fewer. The traditional explanation — every organism has its niche, competing not with other...