All Stories
- Tech
Plenty of foods harbor BPA, study finds
Some communities have banned the sale of plastic baby bottles and sippy cups that are manufactured using bisphenol A, a hormone-mimicking chemical. In a few grocery stores, cashiers have already begun donning gloves to avoid handling thermal receipt paper whose BPA-based surface coating may rub off on the fingers. But how’s a family to avoid exposure to this contaminant when it taints the food supply?
- Health & Medicine
MRIs pinpoint time of stroke
Doing a magnetic resonance scan promptly when a patient arrives at a hospital could render more patients eligible for a time-sensitive clot-busting therapy that can limit brain damage.
- Chemistry
Skin is no barrier to BPA, study shows
The new finding suggests handling store receipts could be a significant source of internal exposure to the hormone-mimicking chemical.
- Earth
Arctic lake yields climate record
A Siberian drilling project goes to great lengths to capture an ancient climate record in a 3.6 million-year-old crater.
- Humans
BP gusher left deep sea toxic for a time, study finds
In the early weeks after the damaged BP well began gushing huge quantities of oil and gas, a toxic brew was developing deep below the surface in plumes emanating from the wellhead. Finned fish and marine mammals probably steered well clear of the spewing hydrocarbons. But planktonic young — larval critters and algae that ride the currents — would have been proverbial sitting ducks.
- Physics
Entanglement loophole closed
A long-distance experiment rejects a challenge to quantum physics.
- Tech
Trading places
As the pace of financial transactions accelerates, researchers look forward to a time when the only limiting factor is the speed of light.
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- Space
Revealing the galaxy’s dark side
Observations of the Milky Way’s center detect gamma rays characteristic of the universe’s missing mass.
- Health & Medicine
The fingers don’t lie
The brain has at least two copy editors, typing experiments show.
- Humans
Deep African roots for toolmaking method
A method for trimming stone-tool edges appeared 75,000 years ago in southern Africa, archaeologists contend, long before previous evidence of the practice.
- Space
Neutron star breaks mass record
The new heavyweight champion in its stellar class rules out a number of exotic theories.
