Feature

Worming Your Way to Better Health

To battle autoimmune disease and allergy, scientists tune in to the tricks of parasites.

Young’uns adrift on the sea

Scientists try to identify and track elusive larvae in a boundless ocean.

Physicists join immune fight

Principles beyond biology may help explain how the body battles infection.

Liquid Acquisition

Two new scenarios ramp up debate over how Earth got its water.

2010 Science News of the Year: Science & Society

Credit: Ayimages/Istockphoto Vaccine link to autism dismissed In February, Lancet formally retracted a 1998 study that had kindled a storm of opposition to vaccines (SN Online: 2/3/10). The research suggested that autism arose in a handful of children after the kids received shots to prevent measles, mumps and rubella. The study’s lead author committed several […]

2010 Science News of the Year: Nutrition

Credit: Krasowit/Shutterstock Fish oil packs a punch Omega-3 fatty acids are turning up in plenty of promising reports, but some tests fail to show a benefit. Reported anti-inflammatory effects of the compound may help to shake out just how these nutrients boost health. High levels of omega-3s are found in fish oil from cold-water species […]

2010 Science News of the Year: Earth

Credit: Alvaro Ybarra Zavala/Getty Images Inside the Haiti quake Some 230,000 Haitians died when a magnitude-7 earthquake struck just outside Port-au-Prince on the afternoon of January 12. Scientists from around the world scrambled to the scene (SN Online: 1/16/10) to assess which fault had ruptured and whether more people were at risk. Early ideas held […]

2010 Science News of the Year: Molecules

Credit: Happy Little Nomad/Wikimedia Commons Gimme an F Chlorophyll, the pigment that makes the world go ’round, has come in four known flavors for more than 60 years: chlorophylls a, b, c and d. Now scientists have discovered another version of the pigment that allows plants and other photosynthesizing organisms to harness sunlight for making […]

2010 Science News of the Year: Genes & Cells

Credit: © Joe McNally/reconstruction by Kennis and Kennis Gene sequencing for all, even Neandertals An unprecedented picture of life’s diversity is emerging as researchers publish the full genetic instruction books of a growing list of species — including one that has been extinct for more than 30,000 years. A project sequencing Neandertal DNA harvested from […]

2010 Science News of the Year: Humans

Credit: Y. Haile-Selassie et al/PNAS 2010 Extreme makeover for Lucy’s kind Recent fossil discoveries suggest that the early hominid species represented by the famous bones of Lucy, who lived 3.2 million years ago in Ethiopia, may have been more like modern humans than previously thought. The skeleton of a 3.6-million-year-old male of the same species, […]

2010 Science News of the Year: Technology

Credit: Michael Morgenstern Lie detectors blend fact and fiction Devices that can discern honest statements from lies are much sought after, especially since a 2003 National Research Council report concluded that traditional polygraphs flag stress, not deception. But newer gadgets increasingly used by police departments and other agencies don’t tell fact from fiction either, researchers […]

2010 Science News of the Year: Body & Brain

Credit: © Bettmann/Corbis Gene therapy moves forward Despite their promise, technologies to correct defective genes have been plagued by safety problems leading to unintended — and sometimes fatal — outcomes. But scientists are inching toward safer, more effective gene therapies that may one day treat a range of diseases, from psychiatric disorders to autoimmune diseases […]