Matter
The Surprising Power of an Electric Eel’s Shock
By CARL ZIMMER
New research has uncovered the remarkable sophistication with which electric eels deploy their shocks.
First Flight Test Is Successful for NASA’s Orion Spacecraft
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
Smiley N. Pool/Houston Chronicle
The Orion capsule, atop a Delta IV rocket, lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Friday morning. It landed in the Pacific four and a half hours later, just a mile off target.
The spacecraft returned to Earth, just a mile off target in the Pacific Ocean, about four and a half hours after it was launched from Florida.
Thousands of Einstein Documents Are Now a Click Away
By DENNIS OVERBYE
A mammoth effort is underway to digitally publish Albert Einstein’s letters, papers, postcards and diaries that have been scattered in archives, attics and shoeboxes.
Narendra Modi, Favoring Growth in India, Pares Back Environmental Rules
By ELLEN BARRY and NEHA THIRANI BAGRI
The new government is moving with remarkable speed to clear away regulatory burdens for industry, the armed forces, mining and power projects.
Deadlier Flu Season Is Possible, C.D.C. Says
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
The flu vaccine is a relatively poor match to a new virus that is currently circulating, health officials said.
U.S. Birthrate Declines for Sixth Consecutive Year; Economy Could Be Factor
By TAMAR LEWIN
Officials, using data from birth certificates, said there were 3.93 million births in 2013, down slightly from 3.95 million in 2012.
Reporters' Notebook
Examining a Rare Nerve-Agent Shell That Wounded American Troops in Iraq
By C. J. CHIVERS and JOHN ISMAY
Newly obtained photographs show the handling and sampling of the binary sarin shell taken from an improvised explosive device used against American forces in Baghdad in 2004.
Liberia Bans Election Rallies to Fight Ebola
By CLAIR MacDOUGALL and RICK GLADSTONE
In issuing the crowd-control order, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf argued that large concentrations of people at election rallies were precisely the situations that could spawn new infections.
Watson’s Nobel Prize Medal for Decoding DNA Fetches $4.1 Million at an Auction
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
For Dr. James D. Watson, a co-winner of the prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA, the sale became part of an effort to redeem himself for making offensive remarks about black people.
‘Superbugs’ Kill India’s Babies and Pose an Overseas Threat
By GARDINER HARRIS
Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times
A mother nursing her newborn at a hospital in Haryana, where almost every baby born in hospitals in recent years has been injected with antibiotics.
Researchers say a significant share of the bacteria in India — in its water, sewage, animals, soil and even its mothers — are resistant to nearly all antibiotics.
Machine Learning
Baby Monitors for a Smart Nursery, but Parents Are Still Better
By MOLLY WOOD
A new generation of wearable devices for sleeping infants can gather lots of data, but parents might struggle to figure out what to do with it all.
University of Texas Says It Can Account for Missing Brain Specimens
By TAMAR LEWIN
The university in Austin said most of the missing 100 brains, collected decades ago for research, had been disposed of as biological waste.
Study Faults Efforts at Wolf Management
By KIRK JOHNSON
A multistate analysis concluded that the traditional approach — killing some wolves to reduce their impact on livestock — mostly does not work.
Science Times: Dec. 2, 2014
The Virus Detectives
By GINA KOLATA
An old building in a shabby part of Cambridge, Mass., formerly a Budweiser distribution center, is now the world’s most powerful factory for analyzing genes from people and viruses.
On View
Math That Pursues, Spins and Swarms
By HELENE STAPINSKI
A new exhibit featuring dozens of glowing, motorized, interactive robots will teach people what it feels like to be Godzilla, and hopefully a little math, too.
Bugs in Manhattan Compete With Rats for Food Refuse
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
A new study has found that millions of tiny insects are potentially consuming the equivalent of 60,000 frankfurters a year on a stretch of 150 blocks of median strips in Manhattan.
Books
Learning Our Roots, Inside and Out
By VIRGINIA HUGHES
Genealogy can reveal secrets about all of us, at once: the emergence of our species, the political history of the world, and the origins of the social structures that dictate modern life.
A Conversation With
Much-Discussed Views That Go Way Back
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
Avi Loeb has published more than 400 papers on the nature of early stars, galaxies, planets and black holes.
Stem
A Tiring Question Challenges Scientists
By DOUGLAS QUENQUA
Scientists from around the world will compete to best answer the question “What is sleep?” in terms that a sixth grader could appreciate.
Matter
Clues to Bees’ History, Tucked Away in Drawers
By CARL ZIMMER
Scientists are dusting off old insect collections in museums in an effort to learn what has happened to bee populations.
More Science News
Missing Its Own Goals, Germany Renews Effort to Cut Carbon Emissions
By MELISSA EDDY
As the nation lags in meeting its goals and businesses complain about global competition, Chancellor Angela Merkel promised to redouble efforts to reach her goal by 2020.
Shovels Untouched, Archaeologists Survey a Medieval Town in Britain
By STEVEN ERLANGER
Researchers used highly sophisticated sensors to map Old Sarum, an 11th-century town near Stonehenge.
Podcast: Science Times
At the Broad Institute in Cambridge, researchers are sequencing the genomes of viruses like Lassa and Ebola to watch them mutate in real time.
Decoding Viruses
Podcast: Science Times
A robot exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Math shows how simple interactions lead to large-scale, organized behavior.
Robot Swarm
Podcast: Science Times
DNA analyses can reveal surprises about the emergence of our species and the political and social structures that dictate modern life.
The Secrets of our Genealogical Past Science Columns
Global Health
GlaxoSmithKline Leads In Getting Drugs to Poor
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Early editions of the Access to Medicine Index focused on infectious and tropical diseases, but the list has been refined to include access to drugs to mental illnesses.
Q&A
Snowflake Symmetry
By C. CLAIBORNE RAY
Snowflakes can appear perfectly symmetrical, raising the question of whether each of its arms knows how the others are growing.
Observatory
A Vulture’s Gut Is Simple but Seems Effective
By SINDYA N. BHANOO
Their guts contain only 76 micro-organisms, yet they are not harmed when ingesting wastes from a carcass.
Where a ‘Vampire’ Threat Hit Close to Home
By SINDYA N. BHANOO
A new study in the journal PLOS One indicates that it was locals, not immigrants, whose corpses were feared.
Gray Seals Are Eating Into Porpoise Population
By SINDYA N. BHANOO
Gray seals are a major predator of harbor porpoises, according to DNA analysis of porpoise bite wounds.
Take a Number
The Ants of Manhattan
By RACHEL NUWER
From subways to sky-high offices, people scurry to and fro in Manhattan, creating something like a giant ant mound — precisely what you will find if you zoom in on its sparse patches of soil.
From Opinion
Op-Ed Contributors
Why Our Memory Fails Us
By CHRISTOPHER F. CHABRIS and DANIEL J. SIMONS
Just because you think you recall something doesn’t mean you do.
From the Magazine
The Mine Disaster That Shook Turkey
By SUZY HANSEN
A mine fire in May killed 301 men, making it the worst industrial disaster in Turkish history. This is the story of two men who lived through it.
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Editors' Picks
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A weekly video series on new research discoveries from how snakes fly and why fruit flies fight to how water bounces and metal chains can flow like fountains.
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