All Stories
- Tech
Special Delivery: Metallic nanorods shuttle genes
A new gene therapy technique relies on nanorods made of gold and nickel to deliver genes to cells in the body.
- Astronomy
Super Data: Hail the cosmic revolution
Ten extremely distant supernovas recently discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope provide evidence that something is pushing objects in the cosmos apart at an ever-faster rate.
- Earth
When Genes Escape
The focus of the debate over transgenic crops has changed from whether genes will escape to what difference it will make when they do.
- Earth
Scrutinized chemicals linger in atmosphere
The newly determined longevity in the atmosphere of certain perfluorinated chemicals indicates that they may disperse environmental contamination far and wide.
- Physics
Cassini confirms Einstein’s theory
En route to a 2004 rendezvous with Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft has verified a key prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity to an accuracy 50 times better than that of previous measurements.
- Health & Medicine
Was President Taft cognitively impaired?
President William Howard Taft apparently had sleep apnea, a breathing disorder that could explain his propensity to nod off.
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Faint smells of schizophrenia
A loss of the ability to tell different odors apart may represent an early sign of schizophrenia.
- Earth
Weekend weather really is different
Analyses of more than 40 years of weather data from around the world reveal that in some regions the difference between daily high and low temperatures on weekend days varies significantly from that measured on weekdays.
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Mothers reveal their baby faces
Mothers in different cultures use three distinctive facial expressions to communicate with their infants.
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Rats join the roster of clones
Scientists have finally cloned the rat, setting the stage for the creation of genetically engineered rats that can be used to study many more diseases in humans.
- Health & Medicine
Making the heart burn
Burning chest pain during a heart attack may stem from a protein that also responds to chili peppers.
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The article states that “trichromacy originally evolved for picking out the most nutritious leaves.” I teach high school students to avoid this kind of statement in regard to evolution. The trait arose by accident (nicely explained in the article) and then became more abundant in the population because it conferred an advantage on the organisms […]
