Wimps or warriors? Honey bee larvae absorb the social culture of the hive, study finds

Even as larvae, honey bees are tuned in to the social culture of the hive, becoming more or less aggressive depending on who raises them, researchers report.

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Full-scale architecture for a quantum computer in silicon

Researchers have designed a full-scale architecture for a quantum computer in silicon. The new concept provides a pathway for building an operational quantum computer with error correction.

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Vampire bats’ saliva is specially evolved for blood-feeding

Researchers have said some of the venomous contents in the bats' saliva likely evolved by recruiting ancestral genes to produce new transcript molecules rather than by creating completely new gene sequences.

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Halloween skies to include dead comet flyby

The large space rock that will zip past Earth this Halloween is most likely a dead comet that, fittingly, bears an eerie resemblance to a skull. Scientists observing asteroid 2015 TB145 with NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, have determined that the celestial object is more than likely a dead comet that has shed its volatiles after numerous passes around the sun.

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NASA spots the 'Great Pumpkin': Halloween asteroid a treat for radar astronomers

NASA scientists are tracking the upcoming Halloween flyby of asteroid 2015 TB145 with several optical observatories and the radar capabilities of the agency's Deep Space Network at Goldstone, California. The asteroid will fly past Earth at a safe distance slightly farther than the moon's orbit on Oct. 31 at 10:01 a.m. PDT (1:01 p.m. EDT). Scientists are treating the flyby of the estimated 1,300-foot-wide (400-meter) asteroid as a science target of opportunity, allowing instruments on "spacecraft Earth" to scan it during the close pass.

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Farming on Mars? The Martian raises questions about soil

In the recent sci-fi hit, The Martian, the main character, astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon), manages to grow potatoes on the planet with a mix of ingenuity, science, and a bit of Hollywood make-believe. Could it work?

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Study spells out why some insects kill their mothers

Among social insects, why does it pay for workers to help the queen in some situations but then also pay to kill her in others? What explains why some queens get killed and not others, and why kill her at all? One expert explored these questions, and found that by eliminating the queen, a matricidal worker frees the way for workers to lay male eggs.

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Simulation of 3-D exotic clouds on an exoplanet

A nearby exoplanet has an atmosphere that might be similar to Earth's before life evolved. Researchers have now simulated three-dimensional exotic clouds on another world.

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Birth of universe modelled in one of largest cosmological simulations ever run

Researchers are sifting through an avalanche of data produced by one of the largest cosmological simulations ever performed.

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New primate species at root of tree of extant hominoids

Researchers have described the new genus and species, Pliobates cataloniae, based on a skeleton recovered from the landfill of Can Mata (Catalonia, NE Spain). The fossil remains belong to an adult female individual that weighed 4-5 kg and moved through the forest canopy by climbing and suspending below branches. Pliobates has important implications for reconstructing the last common ancestor of hominids and hylobatids. The fossil remains belong to an adult female individual named 'Laia' by her discoverers.

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It's a Tyrannosaur-eat-Tyrannosaur world

A nasty little 66-million-year-old family secret has been leaked by a recently unearthed tyrannosaur bone. The bone has peculiar teeth marks that strongly suggest it was gnawed by another tyrannosaur. The find could be some of the best evidence yet that tyrannosaurs were not shy about eating their own kind.

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Scientists fur-bricates hair with inexpensive 3-D printer

3-D printers typically produce hard plastic objects, but researchers have found a way to produce hair-like strands, fibers and bristles using a common, low-cost printer. The technique for producing 3-D-printed hair is similar to -- and inspired by -- the way that gossamer plastic strands are extruded when a person uses a hot glue gun.

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Unique feeding mechanism among marine reptiles from the age of dinosaurs

Among the many groups of marine reptiles from the Age of Dinosaurs, elasmosaurs are famous for their necks, which can have up to 76 vertebrae and make up more than half the total length of the animal. These 'sea dragons' attained worldwide distribution and vanished only during the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous 66 million years ago.

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300 million-year-old 'supershark' fossils found in Texas

Even before the age of dinosaurs, big toothy predators were roaming Texas. 300 million years ago, during a time called the Carboniferous, the area surrounding what is now Dallas, Texas was flooded by a shallow sea. Fossils from this ancient environment were recently recovered from Jacksboro, Texas. Among these were two fossil braincases from massive extinct relatives of modern-day sharks.

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Dinosaurs used nasal passages to keep brains cool

Dinosaur nasal passages were certainly nothing to sneeze at. Possessing among the largest and most complex nasal passages seen in animals, their function has puzzled paleontologists. New research suggests that the size and shape of these nasal passages would have allowed incoming air to cool the blood making its way to the brain, maintaining the brain at an optimum temperature.

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Study solves mysteries of Voyager 1's journey into interstellar space

Scientists have answered the question of why NASA's Voyager 1, when it became the first probe to enter interstellar space in mid-2012, observed a magnetic field that was inconsistent with that derived from other spacecraft observations.

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Algorithm to 3-D print vibrational sounds

In creating what looks to be a simple children's musical instrument -- a xylophone with keys in the shape of zoo animals -- computer scientists have demonstrated that sound can be controlled by 3D-printing shapes. They designed an optimization algorithm and used computational methods and digital fabrication to control acoustic properties -- both sound and vibration -- by altering the shape of 2D and 3D objects.

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Race starts could give some athletes an unfair advantage

The alerting effect means competitors who have longer start processes finish slower, affecting standings aggregated across more than one heat. Effect is enough to deny a medal.

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Social yeast cells prefer to work with close relatives to make our beer, bread and wine

Baker's yeast cells living together in communities help feed each other, but leave incomers from the same species to die from starvation, according to new research. The new research findings could be applied to industries that use yeast to produce biomolecules of interest and to help develop therapeutic strategies against pathogenic fungi.

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Let your head do the talking

When people talk or sing, they often nod, tilt or bow their heads to reinforce verbal messages. But how effective are these head gestures at conveying emotions? Very effective, according to researchers.

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