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Science Friday
:: Science & Society
Top Stories | November 8
:: More in Science & Society
Tiny metal nanoparticles can damage DNA, essentially by triggering toxic gossip.
Biologists can tell a lot about how living things evolved by rooting around in their genes, comparing snippets of DNA from supposedly related — or unrelated — species. This only works, of course, if catalogs of those DNA snippets exist. Which they largely don’t yet — but could in the not-too-distant future. At least, that is, if a consortium of researchers gets its way — and a boatload of money.
There are 33 days until the opening of formal negotiations in Copenhagen on the next global climate-protection treaty. The hoped-for accord would take up where the current treaty leaves off. But to get some perspective on just where that is, a new United Nations report describes for negotiators and the public just how much the Kyoto Protocol has achieved. And real strides have been made in slowing the growth of greenhouse-gas emissions, thanks to many European nations (albeit with little help from North American ones or Japan).
Pregnant women are considered at high risk for suffering complications or death from the new H1N1 pandemic swine flu. So they’re near the top of the list for getting vaccinated. A new international study calculates that up to 400 out of every million pregnant women who receive such swine-flu shots will experience a miscarriage within 24 hours. But not BECAUSE of their flu shots.
Study in an ER shows individuals successfully determined their own HIV status.
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11|7 Issue Links
Subtle gender-linked effects seen in youngsters mirror impacts witnessed earlier in rodents.