All Stories
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- Earth
Polar ice sheets are synchronized swimmers
Glaciers in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres advance and retreat together.
- Health & Medicine
Immune booster also works in reverse
Injections of the protein interleukin-2 can calm runaway defenses that damage tissues in the body, two studies show.
- Health & Medicine
Weaker brain links found in psychopaths
Decreased communication between emotional and executive centers may contribute to the mental disorder.
- Space
Christmas gamma-ray burst still puzzles
Nearly a year after receiving a spectacular celestial gift, astrophysicists are still asking: “What is it?”
- Humans
Germs’ persistence: Nothing to sneeze at
Years ago, I read (probably in Science News) that viruses can’t survive long outside their hosts. That implied any surface onto which a sneezed-out germ found itself — such as the arm of a chair, kitchen counter or car-door handle — would effectively decontaminate itself within hours to a day. A pair of new flu papers now indicates that although many germs will die within hours, none of us should count on it. Given the right environment, viruses can remain infectious — potentially for many weeks, one of the studies finds.
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- Life
Biology’s big bang had a long fuse
The fossil record’s earliest troves of animal life are the result of more than 200 million years of evolution.
- Humans
Cooking can be surprisingly forgiving
Network analysis confirms deviations from the recipe are quite feasible.
- Life
Cretaceous Thanksgiving
A fossilized feathered dinosaur dined on bird not long before its own demise.
- Chemistry
Radiation sickness treatment shows promise
The regimen could be used to protect large numbers of people in the aftermath of major accidents such as Chernobyl or Fukushima.
- Life
DNA to flutter by
The complete genetic instruction book for making monarch butterflies contains information about how the insects manage their long migration to Mexico.
