All Stories
- Health & Medicine
Vinegar: Label lead-tainting data
Under California’s Proposition 65 law, products containing chemicals that may cause cancer, birth defects or reproductive toxicity must carry a warning label at their point of sale. Among such products: pricy balsamic and red-wine vinegars that contain lead. At least some California groceries apparently have taken a conservative approach and post labels suggesting all such vinegars are dangerously tainted. Although they aren't.
- Health & Medicine
H1N1: Call to revise flu-mask policy
Three groups of healthcare professionals sent a letter to President Obama yesterday asking that he instruct his administration to revise federal flu-mask guidance. What these groups want: formal recognition that two studies last month showed conventional surgical masks are about as protective as the fancy — but much more expensive — N95 respirators in limiting H1N1 infection.
- Anthropology
Macaws bred far from tropics during pre-Columbian times
Colorful birds possibly raised for ceremonial and trade purposes long before Spanish arrival
- Tech
House passes medical isotopes bill
A spot of encouraging news emerged yesterday on the medical-isotope front. The House of Representatives voted 440 to 17 in favor of a bill to reestablish domestic production of molybdenum-99. It’s the feedstock for the most heavily used nuclear agent in diagnostic medicine.
- Physics
Invisibility Uncloaked
In the race to make things disappear, scientists gain ground on science fiction.
- Life
Hormones give lantern sharks the glow
In a first, a study shows that bioluminescence can be controlled by slow-acting hormones, not rapid-fire nerve cells.
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Parents’ obesity may affect children’s brains; beetle with bifocals
More news from the Society for Neuroscience meeting.
- Space
Signature of antimatter detected in lightning
The signature of positrons has been found for the first time in gamma rays associated with storms on Earth.
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Aping the Stone Age
Chimp chasers join artifact extractors to probe the roots of stone tools.
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- Health & Medicine
Smallpox — The Death of a Disease
The Inside Story of Eradicating a Worldwide Killer, by D.A. Henderson.
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National Geographic Concise History of Science and Invention: An Illustrated Time Line by Jolyon Goddard, ed.
Photos, illustrations and essays trace the progress of discovery from ancient times to modern days. National Geographic, 2009, 352 p., $40. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CONCISE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND INVENTION: AN ILLUSTRATED TIME LINE EDITED BY JOLYON GODDARD
