All Stories
- Materials Science
Etched glass stops cracks in their tracks
Adding wavy lines to glass reduces the material’s notorious brittleness.
- Health & Medicine
Nanopackaging biodegrades after delivering cancer drug
DNA binding creates potentially nontoxic tumor-targeting structures.
- Tech
A turkey’s wattle inspires a biosensor’s design
A group of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley have developed a color-changing biosensor inspired by a turkey’s wattle.
- Neuroscience
Big science for lean times
The greatest promises of brain research — a cellular description of thought and behavior and, even more importantly, strategies to battle disorders of the brain — have yet to be fulfilled. Making good on those promises is the motivation behind the federal BRAIN Initiative.
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- Health & Medicine
Low semen levels in mice make for fatter sons
Mice without the glands that make semen may sire sons with more body fat.
- Earth
Eighth century carbon spike not from comet impact
The space rock would have to have been 100 kilometers across and 100 billion to 1,000 billion tons, leaving a disastrous impact not supported by geological or written records.
- Animals
Windows may kill up to 988 million birds a year in the United States
Single-family homes and low-rise buildings do much more damage than skyscrapers.
- Animals
Gray seals snack on harbor porpoises
Photo evidence confirms seals' fatal attacks on harbor porpoises in the English Channel, suggesting that declines in the seals' usual fare are forcing the animals to seek out other high-energy food.
- Earth
Grand Canyon’s origin dated to 6 million years ago
Even though parts of the canyon are old, the chasm could not have taken on its grand form until erosion from the Colorado River connected all of the smaller canyons, which was roughly 6 million years ago, scientists argue.
- Genetics
Stone Age Spaniard had blue eyes, dark skin
Genetics of 7,000-year-old skeleton suggests blond hair, pale skin came later.
- Materials Science
Nanotube whiskers could aid robot-human interaction
Tiny hairlike sensors made from nanomaterials are more sensitive than existing devices to detect tiny pressures.
