All Stories
- Health & Medicine
Bioengineering better blood vessels
Durable conduits made with a tough protein produced by living cells might improve options for some patients who need heart bypass surgery or kidney dialysis, a new study finds.
- Space
Spacecraft sees signs of 1,200-plus worlds
The Kepler mission releases information on hundreds of newly discovered candidate planets beyond the solar system, including about 50 that could be habitable.
- Psychology
Sometimes, happiness is for bozos
Despite its benefits, happiness and its pursuit has risks, as writer Bruce Bower describes in a humorous report from the recent meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
- Humans
Early cow’s milk consumption may cut breast-cancer risk
Research studies paint a muddy picture of milk’s malignant threat. Some have linked consumption of cow’s milk with a heightened breast-cancer risk. Others have suggested milk drinking might be protective. A new animal study suggests those data may not be quite as contradictory as they at first seemed.
- Life
Ants manage incest without inbreeding
An unorthodox family structure may have helped longhorn crazy ants spread around the globe.
- Space
Atom & Cosmos
Evidence gets stronger that Mars once held an ocean, plus more in this week’s news.
- Physics
Invisibility cloaks hit the big time
Using natural crystals, researchers have found a way to make objects up to a few millimeters tall disappear.
- Humans
In tough economy, PhD appears to help
U.S. residents holding PhD’s in science, health and engineering were considerably more likely to be employed during late 2008 (the most recent period for which data are available) than were Americans generally, according to a just-released National Science Foundation report.
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- Humans
When meal times no longer focus on food
There’s little doubt that humanity has been tipping the scales at increasingly higher weights and rates. A study now lends support to the idea that meal-time distractions can mask the cues that we really have eaten quite enough. Moreover, it finds, the caloric fallout of not paying attention to what we’re eating doesn’t necessarily end when a meal is over.
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- Life
Aerobic exercise boosts memory
Regular walking improved seniors' recall and reversed declines in the size of a brain structure important for remembering.
