Science Quickly

Slightly altering one’s appearance—even with glasses—can indeed hinder facial recognition by others. Erika Beras reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subjects suffering insomnia got more wrong answers in a face-matching task—but they were paradoxically more confident of their responses. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Theory has it yawning helps cool the brain—and it turns out animals with bigger brains do indeed tend to yawn longer. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With a shorter season of sea ice, polar bears have less access to marine mammals. But switching to a terrestrial diet deprives them of the fatty seal meals they need to thrive.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The parachute flower smells like alarm pheromones of a honeybee, to attract tiny flies that feed on bees under attack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A technique called “biosparging” relies on pumping oxygen underground to help naturally occurring microorganisms multiply and consume oil spills.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When rain fills the massive footprints left by elephants, communities of aquatic invertebrates quickly move in Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Future wet suits with surface textures like the thick fur of otters that trap insulating air layers could keep tomorrow's divers warmer in icy waters.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Female applicants to postdoctoral positions in geosciences were nearly half as likely to receive excellent letters of recommendation, compared with their male counterparts. Christopher Intagliata reports Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jean-Pierre Sauvage, James Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa share the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David J. Thouless, F. Duncan Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz split the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Japan's Yoshinori Ohsumi wins the 2016 prize for discoveries related to autophagy, the process in cells whereby they degrade some of their internal structures and send the parts out for recycling.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reseachers have started to examine the genetic traces of the movement of some six million African-Americans from the south to the north and west between 1910 and 1970.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A housefly relative appears to be key to the reproductive success of a hardy tundra shrub. But the insect is threatened by the warming climate. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A protein from microscopic creatures called tardigrades keeps their DNA protected—and could someday shield humans from radiation.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the sun, moon and Earth are aligned, high tidal stress may increase the chances that an earthquake will grow bigger than it otherwise might have been. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An ant walking in the desert can gauge distance by footsteps and the sun's position, but an ant being carried can estimate distance by visual information perceived as it passed by.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers used high-tech visualization techniques to peer inside an ancient scroll too fragile to unwrap.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The branches of birch trees in Europe sagged by as much as four inches at night compared with daytime.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A chromosomal rearrangement may cause one mosquito species to be lured to cows instead of humans for a blood meal. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Drinkers surrounded by even more inebriated people feel less drunk than a breathalyzer test indicates they actually are. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fabric dyed with indigo just found in Peru is some 1,600 years older than indigo-dyed fabrics that have been found in the Middle East.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By playing road noise where there was no road, researchers were able to gauge the effect of the noise on bird behavior without having to deal with the effect of the road itself.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

South America and central Africa lost the most wilderness in a decline since the 1990s that saw the planet's wild areas down by a tenth   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The chip uses pulses of laser light to generate truly random numbers, the basis of encryption. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices