According to findings that could have been pulled from a deep-sea sequel to Avatar, bacteria appear to conduct electrical currents across the ocean floor, driving linked chemical reactions at relatively vast distances. Noticed only when reseachers happened to test sediment leftovers from another experiment, the phenomenon may add a new mechanism to Earth’s biogeochemistry. “The cycling of elements... 

The Department of Energy has provided almost $10 billion in loan guarantees for two nuclear and three solar power plants in just the past week. The moves mark a new DOE strategy to finance the large-scale deployment of low-carbon technologies in the United States. The Oakland-based company BrightSource will conditionally receive $1.4 billion in loans for a solar complex in the Mojave Desert, while... 

How all-female species avoid the shrinkage of their gene pool is among the animal kingdom’s great mysteries. Now biologists think they’ve discovered the trick. According to a study published Sunday in Nature, egg-producing cells in a ladies-only species of whiptail lizard contain double the standard genetic complement. They pick the healthiest set of chromosomes, preventing the loss of vital variation. In... 

NASA’s new infrared telescope has released its first images. The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer has returned more than 250,000 raw images. To celebrate its performance thus far, NASA selected four of them for processing and publication. Above, you can see the comet, Siding Spring, which was discovered in 2007 by Australian observers. Its 10 million-mile-long tail is made of glowing dust pushed... 

A fresh look at forgotten fossils has revealed two new species of giant, filter-feeding fish that swam Earth’s oceans for 100 million years, occupying the ecological niche now filled by whales and whale sharks. Until now, that ancient niche was thought to be empty, and such fish to be a short-lived evolutionary bust. “We knew these animals existed, but thought they were only around for 20 million... 

Nearly every person who has had their entire genome sequenced will gather in a single room near Boston on April 27. It’s the last time this will ever happen. Within a year, the dozens of people in this elite group will have been joined by a thousand or more people. Soon after that, hobbyists may be roaming the streets with handheld DNA analyzers, high school athletes may experiment with gene therapy... 

A short period of fasting prior to chemotherapy may protect healthy cells but leave cancer cells vulnerable to drugs, according to a new study. The results are very preliminary, based on animal research and a case study of just 10 people. But if they hold up, doctors could have a new tool for reducing chemotherapy’s side effects and safely administering larger doses. “Side effects aren’t just,... 

As the sun reawakens from an anomalously quiet period, keep track of solar flares, sunspots and coronal mass ejections with a new iPhone app that puts the real-time status of the sun in your hand. “This is more than cool,” Dick Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, said in a press release. “It’s transformative. For the first time ever, we can monitor the sun as a living, breathing... 

A new technique that uses a laser to vaporize materials like rocks and steel to analyze their chemical composition is finding new applications from Mars to forensics. Thanks to its relatively small size and low cost, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy is emerging from the laboratory and turning into a precise tool for figuring out what something is made of. What had been a technique largely for... 

Of all science’s model organisms, none is as weird as Dictyostelium discoideum, a single-celled amoeba better known as slime mold. When they run out of food, millions coalesce into a single, slug-like creature that wanders in search of nutrients, then forms a mushroom-like stalk, scatters as spores and starts the cycle again. In the rules governing the behavior of these creatures, researchers hope... 

Once Martian sand grains hop, they don’t stop. That’s the conclusion of a new study that finds sand can move on Mars without much windy encouragement. Mars’ sandy surface has clearly been shaped by wind. Its characteristic dunes and ripples are the kind formed by sand particles taking short wind-borne hops, a process called saltation. But atmospheric simulations and landers’ direct measurements... 

The Pentagon’s scientific fringe want to fast-track the quick and easy repair of wartime wounds, by eliminating one of the most important elements of tissue engineering – and replacing it with magnetic fields. Last year, Darpa-funded researchers successfully generated human muscle tissue, and the agency requested proposals for a device that could pump out new body parts made with adult stem... 

Meet Inuk, a 4,000-year-old man known from a tuft of hair found in Greenland permafrost. In those frozen strands, enough DNA was preserved to sequence the first ancient-human genome and confirm an unexpected ancient migration from Siberia to the New World, plus a few of Inuk’s own traits. Along with brown eyes, brown skin and facial hair, he had “a tendency to baldness,” said Eske Willerslev,... 

Scientists have unearthed an almost perfectly preserved spider fossil in China dating back to the middle Jurassic era, 165 million years ago. The fossilized spiders, Eoplectreurys gertschi, are older than the only two other specimens known by around 120 million years. The level of detail preserved in the fossils is amazing, said paleontologist Paul Selden of the University of Kansas and lead author... 

Another week, another colorful feathered dinosaur. Hot on the heels of a recent report identifying pigments in fossilized dino feathers and filaments (SN Online: 1/27/10), a different team of scientists says that it has mapped the full pattern of plumage sported by the oldest known feathered dinosaur. Paleontologists first described Anchiornis huxleyi, which lived in what is now northeastern China... 

Federal court hearings continued Tuesday on a lawsuit that could transform biotechnology in the United States by eliminating gene patents. The case hinges around the claims of Utah-based Myriad Genetics on BRCA1 and BRCA2, a pair of genes closely linked to breast and ovarian cancer. Myriad “owns” the genes, and says its patents make it possible to profit on diagnostic tests. The company argues... 

May 19, 2009—Meet “Ida,” the small “missing link” found in Germany that’s created a big media splash and will likely continue to make waves among those who study human origins. In a new book, documentary, and promotional Web site, paleontologist Jorn Hurum, who led the team that analyzed the 47-million-year-old fossil seen above, suggests Ida is a critical missing-link... 

Beauty is famously in the eye of the beholder; but it’s also in the beholder’s brain, and may work differently in the brains of men and women. In men, images they consider to be beautiful appear to activate brain regions responsible for locating objects in absolute terms — x- and y-coordinates on a grid. Images considered beautiful by women do the same, but they also activate regions... 

If you’ve ever wondered why humans don’t have long, prehensile toes that would turn our feet into extra hands, here’s an answer: stubby toes may be custom-made for running. Biomechanical analysis shows that long toes require more energy and generate more shock than short toes, making them one of many adaptations that may have helped our savannah-dwelling ancestors chase their prey. “Longer...