All Stories
- Materials Science
Conch yields clues for future materials
A conch's tough, calcium carbonate shell resists fractures because a protein surrounds the mineral crystals throughout the shell.
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Prenatal problems linked to schizophrenia
Three large, long-term studies found that periods of oxygen deprivation in the fetus, along with obesity and second-trimester respiratory infections in the mother, are associated with adult schizophrenia.
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19160
I found the “stats” about blood donors and patients in this article misleading, with the implication that 8 million volunteer donors are more than enough for 4.5 million patients. A comparison of how many people donate blood during their lives and how many people need blood donations during theirs might have been more informative. We […]
- Health & Medicine
Getting the Bugs Out of Blood
Researchers are developing methods for inactivating all sorts of pathogens that could be found in blood, including West Nile virus, an emerging infection recently brought to the United States from Africa.
- Humans
From the January 21, 1933, issue
SEVEN SLEEPERS CATACOMBS EXPLORED BY ARCHAEOLOGISTS One of the most venerable of Christian legends, running back through the middle ages into late antiquity, is that of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus: seven youths who hid themselves from the persecution of a pagan Roman emperor and awoke 200 years later to find the empire Christian. Then, […]
- Earth
Earth Art
Brilliant, colorful patches of Earth, as seen in photographs snapped by the Landsat-7 satellite, can look like the work of abstract artists. A number of these beautiful, high-resolution images have now been assembled into an online gallery depicting “Our Earth as Art.” Go to: http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/earthasart/
- Astronomy
Planet Formation on the Fast Track
New computer simulations suggest that planets as massive as Jupiter may have formed in only a few hundred years rather than several million years, as the leading theory of planet formation requires.
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19207
The negotiators of the global persistent organic pollutants (POPs) treaty will include country-specific exemptions for continued use of DDT for malaria control in the approximately two dozen countries still using it. Nevertheless, your article also notes that DDT may soon be unavailable in many malaria-stricken regions. To address this concern, countries should consider some form […]
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- Planetary Science
Martian leaks: Hints of present-day water
In some of the coldest regions on Mars, water appears to have recently gushed from just beneath the surface, running down crater walls and steep valleys.
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Human Genome Work Reaches Milestone
Two rival groups jointly announced that each has read essentially all of the 3 billion or so letters that spell out the human genome, the genetic information encoded with the 6 feet of DNA coiled up in every human cell.
- Health & Medicine
C-Minus—The Fallout of Parents’ Smoking
Children who live with smokers may need more oranges and other rich sources of vitamin C, a new study concludes. It finds that exposure to even a little secondhand smoke significantly depresses concentrations of this important vitamin. Oranges are usually the first food that most people think of when asked to name sources of vitamin […]
