DNA Analysis Shows Polar Bears Have Adapted Quickly in the Past

Genetic analysis of an ancient polar bear fossil has formally dated the species’ birth to 150,000 years ago, shortly before an Ice Age thaw produced a climate comparable to what’s expected in a globally warmed future.
“They’ve certainly experienced climate changes before,” said Charlotte Lindqvist, a biologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo [...]

Insect Character Recognition: Computers See Bees Like We Can’t

Studying animal behavior used to mean traveling into the wild and making detailed notes about gorillas. Now, biologist-coders are figuring out how to use computer vision techniques to convert the myriad motions of creatures large and small into crunchable data.
Researchers are figuring out how track the movements of insects such as Drosophila, the fruit fly, [...]

No Lie! Your Facebook Profile Is the Real You

“On the Internet,” one dog tells another in a classic New Yorker cartoon, “nobody knows you’re a dog.”
The internet is notorious for its digital dens of deception. But on Facebook, what you see tends to be what you get — at least in one study of tailless, two-legged young adults.
College-age users of Facebook in the [...]

Flash-Freezing Technique May Boost Egg Survival Rates

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, [...]

Blood-Chilling Device Could Save Stroke Victims From Brain Damage

SAN ANTONIO — Cool runnings, indeed. A tiny device placed inside a central vein can safely refrigerate blood as it flows through stroke patients, lowering their temperature and raising the possibility that they might gain brain protection from hypothermia without having to be packed in ice.
Although the trial didn’t find that stroke patients getting their [...]

What Is Time? One Physicist Hunts for the Ultimate Theory

SAN DIEGO — One way to get noticed as a scientist is to tackle a really difficult problem. Physicist Sean Carroll has become a bit of a rock star in geek circles by attempting to answer an age-old question no scientist has been able to fully explain: What is time?
Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist [...]

Fish See Their Enemies’ Faces in Ultraviolet

Seen in the right light, yellow reef fish become spotty pains in the tail fin.
Members 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 [...]

Wired’s Biometric Super Bowl Ad Winner Is a Geeky Surprise

The results are in from the Wired Biometric Super Bowl Party, and 25 of our readers’ autonomic nervous systems have selected their top 10 advertisements.

The Google ad that had everyone talking after the game got the attention of our party goers as well, but the real winner was a surprise. It turns out our readers are even [...]

Biodiversity Explained by Ignoring the Forest for the Trees

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 [...]

Deep-Sea Bacteria Form Avatar-Style Electrochemical Networks

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 and [...]