Best Citation Awards

Some ants have figured out how to keep from getting lost: Build taller anthills. Desert ants that live in the hot, flat salt pans of Tunisia spend their days looking for food. Successful grocery runs can take the insects as far as 1.1 kilometers from their nests. So some of these ants build towering hills over their nests that serve as a landmark to guide the way home, researchers report in the July 10 Current Biology . “I am surprised and fascinated that ants have visual acuity at the distances implied in this work,” says ecologist Judith Bronstein of the University of Arizona in Tucson who wasn’t involved in the new study.  It “also implies that ants regularly assess the complexity of their local habitat and change their decisions based on what they conclude about it.” Desert ants ( Cataglyphis spp.) use a navigation system called path integration, relying on the sun’s position and counting their steps to keep track of where they are relative to their nest (SN: 1/19/17 ) . But

A vaccine to fight Lyme disease, decades in the making, has received a temporary green light from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But it’s not for people — it’s for mice. The vaccine isn’t a rodent-sized injection, which wouldn’t work for targeting large populations quickly. Instead, it’s coated onto edible, nutrition-free pellets that mice gobble up. The vaccine makes mice develop antibodies that neutralize Borrelia burgdorferi , the bacterium that causes most U.S. cases of Lyme disease. When ticks imbibe the blood of a vaccinated mouse, the idea goes, they won’t get an active infection and so can’t transmit the bacteria to people or other animals.  “Mice are probably one of the most important reservoir hosts for Lyme disease,” especially in the Eastern United States where Lyme disease is rampant, says Jean Tsao, a disease ecologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing who was not involved in developing the new vaccine. Reservoir hosts are animals with B. burgdorferi

Anyons, anyone? Scientists have created strange new particle-like objects called non-abelian anyons. These long-sought quasiparticles can be “braided,” meaning that they can be moved around one another and retain a memory of that swapping, similar to how a braided ponytail keeps a record of the order in which strands cross over each other. Two independent teams — one led by researchers at Google, the other by researchers at the quantum computing company Quantinuum — have reported creating and braiding versions of these anyons using quantum computers. The Google and Quantinuum results, respectively reported May 11 in Nature and May 9 at arXiv.org , could help scientists construct quantum computers that are resistant to the errors that currently bedevil the machines. Non-abelian anyons defy common intuition about what happens to objects that swap locations. Picture the street game with cups and balls, where a performer swaps identical cups back and forth. If you weren’t watching clos

While volunteering at the University of New Mexico’s Children’s Hospital in Albuquerque, Quinton Smith quickly realized that he could never be a physician. Then an undergrad at the university, Smith was too sad seeing sick kids all the time. But, he thought, “maybe I can help them with science.”   Smith had picked his major, chemical engineering, because he saw it as “a cooler way to go premed.” Though he ultimately landed in the lab instead of at the bedside, he has remained passionate about finding ways to cure what ails people. Today, his lab at the University of California, Irvine uses tools often employed in fabricating tiny electronics to craft miniature, lab-grown organs that mimic their real-life counterparts. “Most of the time, when we study cells, we study them in a petri dish,” Smith says. “But that’s not their native form.” Prodding cells to assemble into these 3-D structures, called organoids, can give researchers a new way to study diseases and test potential treatm

If you ever come across a Cooper’s black orchid in the wild, you probably would mistake it for a stick — or perhaps an odd potato if you dig a little underneath it. Unlike many others of its kind, this delicate flower is devoid of lush green leaves and flashy petals. Its stem lies on the floor of New Zealand’s broadleaf forests for most of the year, only popping up during the summer months to blossom with pendulous brown and white blooms. And rather than growing a tangle of roots, the orchid sprouts a pale brown tuber. But the chances of encountering a Cooper’s black orchid ( Gastrodia cooperae ) are getting slimmer. Fewer than 250 adult plants have been found since botanist Carlos Lehnebach identified the species in 2016, and they live in only three sites across New Zealand. To make matters worse, feral pigs, rabbits and other animals like to nosh on the tubers. And the forests where the orchid grows are being cleared for farmland ( SN: 12/21/20 ). In 2018, New Zealand’s Department

It’s hard to know how busy this year’s Atlantic hurricane season will be , thanks to a rarely observed combination of ocean and climate conditions. The Atlantic Ocean is in an active storm era, a yearslong period of increasing storm activity. Plus sea surface temperatures there are much higher than usual this year, which can fuel storms, Matthew Rosencrans, the lead hurricane forecaster for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said May 25 at a news conference. But this year will also see the onset of an El Niño phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation ocean and climate pattern, which tends to suppress hurricane formation. That’s not a scenario that has occurred in historical records often, Rosencrans said. “It’s definitely kind of a rare setup for this year.” He and his colleagues reported that there’s a 40 percent chance that Atlantic hurricane activity will be near normal this year. Near normal is actually unusually high for an El Niño year. But there’s also

Planetary scientists now know how thick the Martian crust is, thanks to the strongest Marsquake ever observed. On average, the crust is between 42 and 56 kilometers thick , researchers report in a paper to appear in Geophysical Research Letters . That’s roughly 70 percent thicker than the average continental crust on Earth. The measurement was based on data from NASA’s InSight lander, a stationary seismometer that recorded waves rippling through Mars’ interior for four Earth years. Last May, the entire planet shook with a magnitude 4.7 quake that lasted more than six hours ( SN: 5/13/22 ). “We were really fortunate that we got this quake,” says seismologist Doyeon Kim of ETH Zurich. InSight recorded seismic waves from the quake that circled Mars up to three times. That let Kim and colleagues infer the crust thickness over the whole planet. Not only is the crust thicker than that of the Earth and the moon, but it’s also inconsistent across the Red Planet, the team found. And that

Meet the house that diapers built. Researchers have designed and erected a house that has shredded, disposable diapers mixed into its concrete and mortar. A single-story home of about 36 square meters can pack nearly 2 cubic meters of used diapers into its floors, columns and walls , the team reports May 18 in Scientific Reports . Using recycled diapers as composite building materials would not only shrink landfill waste but also could make such homes more affordable, the team says, a particular need in developing countries like Indonesia where the demand for low-cost housing far outstrips the supply. Indonesia’s urban population has increased by about 4 percent per year in the last three decades, and more of its people are moving to urban centers. Over two-thirds of Indonesians are expected to live in urban areas by 2025, says environmental engineer Siswanti Zuraida of the University of Kitakyushu in Japan. That population boom is putting a heavy strain on both housing demand and w

Giardia has plagued people for a long time. The parasite can bring about dysentery — a miserable (and occasionally deadly) mixture of diarrhea, cramps and fever. Scientists have now uncovered traces of the giardia parasite in the remains of two roughly 2,600-year-old toilets once used by the wealthy denizens of Jerusalem. The remains are the oldest known biological evidence of giardia anywhere in the world, researchers report May 25 in Parasitology . The single-cell parasite Giardia duodenalis can be found today in human guts around the planet. This wasn’t always the case — but working out how pathogens made their debut and moved around is no easy feat ( SN: 2/2/22 ). While some intestinal parasites can be preserved for centuries in the ground, others, like giardia, quickly disintegrate and can’t be spotted under a microscope. In 1991 and 2019, archeologists working at two sites in Jerusalem came across stone toilet seats in the remains of mansionlike homes. These “were quite pos

Microbial stress can be a boon for young trees. Saplings grown in soil microbes that have experienced drought, cold or heat are more likely to survive when faced with those same conditions, researchers report in the May 26 Science . And follow-up tests suggest that the microbes’ protective relationship with trees may linger beyond initial planting.    The team’s findings could aid massive tree planting efforts by giving new saplings the best chance of survival over the long run, says Ian Sanders, a plant and fungal ecologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. “If you can control which microbes are put onto tree saplings in a nursery, you can probably help to determine whether they’re going to survive or not when they’re transplanted to the field.” As climate change pushes global temperatures ever higher, many species must either adapt to new conditions or follow their ideal climate to new places ( SN: 1/25/23 ). While forests’ ranges have changed as Earth’s climate has

More than 5,000 animal species previously unknown to science live in a pristine part of the deep sea. Their home — called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone — sits in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico. The zone is roughly twice the size of India, sits 4,000 to 6,000 meters deep and is largely a mystery, like much of the deep sea. In a new study, scientists amassed and analyzed more than 100,000 published records of animals found in the zone, with some records dating back to the 1870s. About 90 percent of species from these records were previously undescribed : There were only about 440 named species compared with roughly 5,100 without scientific names. Worms and arthropods make up the bulk of the undescribed creatures, but other animals found there include sponges, sea cucumbers and corals, the researchers report May 25 in Current Biology . “The diversity down there does surprise me,” says study coauthor Muriel Rabone, a data analyst and biologist at the Natur

Beer breweries’ trash may have been Danish painters’ treasure. The base layer of several paintings created in Denmark in the mid-1800s contains remnants of cereal grains and brewer’s yeast , the latter being a common by-product of the beer brewing process, researchers report May 24 in Science Advances. The finding hints that artists may have used the leftovers to prime their canvases.   Records suggest that Danish house painters sometimes created glossy, decorative paint by adding beer, says Cecil Krarup Andersen, a conservator at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. But yeast and cereal grains have never been found in primer. Andersen had been studying paintings from the Danish Golden Age, an explosion of artistic creativity in the first half of the 19th century, at the National Gallery of Denmark. Understanding these paintings’ chemical compositions is key to preserving them, she says. As part of this work, she and colleagues looked at 10 pieces by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersbe

A system that restores communication between the brain and spine has enabled a man paralyzed by a spinal cord injury to regain near natural walking ability. Once the patient’s brain activity was decoded, the brain-spine interface took mere minutes to calibrate, after which the man reported natural-feeling control over movements. He still needs crutches but can easily navigate ramps and steps, surpassing gains from previous treatments, researchers report May 24 in Nature . “The results are consistent with what I’d hope would happen, which is encouraging,” says V. Reggie Edgerton, a physiologist at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Downey, Calif., who was not involved in the study. In terms of treating spinal cord paralysis, he says, “we’re at the stage of the Wright brothers and flight.” Spinal cord injuries can interrupt communication between the brain and spine, causing paralysis. Previous research showed that stimulating spinal cord nerves can produce movement

The spiny mouse is an unassuming rodent, but it’s armed with a very special tail. CT scans show the tail is sheathed in a secret blanket of bony plates . Before the scans, only one other group of modern mammals was known to wield this kind of armor: armadillos. The discovery, reported May 24 in iScience , may mean that the skin bones are more widespread in mammals than previously thought and could shed light on their evolution.  The rodent’s secret was revealed when evolutionary biologist Edward Stanley of the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville put a museum specimen of a spiny mouse ( Acomys spp .) in an X-ray machine as part of a multi-institutional project to develop 3-D digital models of all vertebrate life. It was a “nondescript looking” mouse with slightly spiky fur, Stanley says. But in the initial X-ray, its tail looked unusual. “It looked kind of dark and weird,” he says. A more detailed CT scan showed the mouse’s whole tail was covered in overlapping bony pla

On Jupiter, lightning jerks and jolts a lot like it does on Earth. Jovian lightning emits radio wave pulses that are typically separated by about one millisecond, researchers report May 23 in Nature Communications . The energetic prestissimo, the scientists say, is a sign that the gas giant’s lightning propagates in pulses , at a pace comparable to that of the bolts that cavort through our own planet’s thunderclouds. The similarities between the two world’s electrical phenomena could have implications for the search for alien life. Arcs of lightning on both worlds appear to move somewhat like a winded hiker going up a mountain, pausing after each step to catch their breath, says Ivana Kolmašová, an atmospheric physicist at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. “One step, another step, then another step … and so on.” Here on Earth, lightning forms as turbulent winds within thunderclouds cause many ice crystals and water droplets to rub together, become charged and then move to opp

Deblina Sarkar makes little machines, for which she has big dreams. The machines are so little, in fact, that they can humbly inhabit living cells. And her dreams are so big, they may one day save your mind. Sarkar is a nanotechnologist and assistant professor at MIT. She develops ultratiny electronic devices, some smaller than a mote of dust, that she hopes will one day enter the brain. She’s also a fan of Kung Fu movies and likes to dance her own twist on bharata natya, a classical Indian dance form. Occasionally she goes hiking with her graduate students, once taking them as far as Yellowstone. Building camaraderie is vital, Sarkar says. But “I’m probably working day and night on my research,” she confesses. “There is an urgent problem at hand.” That problem is Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other neurological afflictions that assault the minds of millions of people worldwide. Sarkar’s solution: Employ minute machines to detect and reverse these disorders. “She w

Scientists can see chronic pain in the brain with new clarity. Over months, electrodes implanted in the brains of four people picked up specific signs of their persistent pain. This detailed view of chronic pain , described May 22 in Nature Neuroscience , suggests new ways to curtail the devastating condition.  The approach “provides a way into the brain to track pain,” says Katherine Martucci, a neuroscientist who studies chronic pain at Duke University School of Medicine. Chronic pain is incredibly common. In the United States from 2019 to 2020, more adults were diagnosed with chronic pain than with diabetes, depression or high blood pressure, researchers reported May 16 in JAMA Network Open . Chronic pain is also incredibly complex, an amalgam influenced by the body, brain, context, emotions and expectations, Martucci says. That complexity makes chronic pain seemingly invisible to an outsider, and very difficult to treat. One treatment approach is to stimulate the brain with el

Saturn’s rings might have formed while trilobites scuttled about on Earth. Space dust has been accumulating on the icy halos for no more than 400 million years , researchers report in the May 12 Science Advances . The 4.5-billion-year-old planet appears to have acquired its iconic ornamentation relatively recently, says physicist Sascha Kempf of the University of Colorado Boulder. “We’re quite lucky to see a ring in the first place.” The rings of Saturn are made of countless icy particles, which become covered with dust as tiny meteoroids strike them. These dustings darken the rings’ complexion, like mud sullies snow on roads in winter. This cosmic staining was key to the new analysis, as was the now-defunct Cassini spacecraft’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer. From 2004 to 2017, the instrument caught dust-sized micrometeoroids moving around Saturn, measuring their velocity, mass, charge and composition. Kempf and colleagues identified about 160 particles — out of millions — that could have h