All Stories
- Climate
Oceans warmed in recent decades
Measurements show a trend of rising temperatures along with a leveling off since 2003.
- Animals
Argonauts use shells as flotation devices
The octopus relatives create their own buoyancy devices by gulping and hoarding air from the surface.
- Chemistry
A new source of dioxins: Clean hands
Manufacturers have been adding the germ fighter triclosan to soaps, hand washes, and a range of other products for years. But here’s a dirty little secret: Once it washes down the drain, that triclosan can spawn dioxins.
- Health & Medicine
Behavioral therapy can help kids with Tourette disorder
A ten-week course of practicing techniques to countermand tics works better than counseling.
- Health & Medicine
Cell phone-cancer study an enigma
An epidemiological study of a link between cell phone usage and brain cancer proved inconclusive.
- Health & Medicine
Caring for a spouse with dementia leaves caregiver at risk
Wives and husbands who attend to mates have greater chance of developing problems themselves, a new study finds.
- Earth
Interphone study finds hints of brain cancer risk in heavy cell-phone users
A major decade-long international study concludes that, overall, cell-phone users show no increased risk of developing brain tumors. The same study reports that among people who have used cell phones the most and longest — for at least 10 years and on average 30 minutes or more a day — risk of brain tumors is substantially elevated when compared to people who don’t use cell phones. And the real enigma: Tumor risks calculated for each of the lower cell-phone use categories was substantially under that seen in people who use regular, corded phones.
- Earth
Interphone’s data on cell phones and cancer: The spin begins
A May 16 press release by the cell phone industry reports that “The International Journal of Epidemiology today published a combined data analysis from a multi national population-based case-control study of glioma and meningioma, the most common types of brain tumour.” In fact, the journal hasn’t. Yet. But the industry group was anxious to put its spin on the paper’s findings after a handful of UK newspapers reported on this study – well in advance of the scheduled lifting of a news embargo on its data.
- Life
Light shows fMRI works as advertised
Optogenetic method validates assumption underlying brain imaging technique.
- Earth
Gulf spill: BP gets go ahead for full-scale underwater use of dispersants
All week, U.S. federal agencies have been evaluating an unprecedented use of oil dispersants: to break up crude spewing from the seafloor. BP won preliminary approval to try them in limited tests against an ongoing torrent of oil spewing from the base of a devastated exploration rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Late morning on May 15, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Coast Guard issued their joint approval for a scale-up of the novel subsea application of these chemicals.
- Physics
Record number of photons lassoed into a quantum limbo
Physicists entangle five particles, each existing in two states simultaneously.
- Science & Society
Students win big at Intel ISEF 2010
Global high school science competition concludes with top prizes going to projects on cancer-fighting quantum dots, quantum computer algorithms and computer programming.
