News

  1. Plants

    Give and Take: Plant parasites dole out genes while stealing nutrients

    New evidence suggests that parasitic plants can transfer their own genes into host plants.

    By
  2. Health & Medicine

    Vaccine Stretch: Smaller dose packs punch against flu

    A fraction of the standard dose of flu vaccine appears to grant people immunity to influenza if injected into the skin rather than in the muscle of the upper arm.

    By
  3. Earth

    DDT linked to miscarriages

    A study of Chinese women finds that the pesticide DDT can not only affect menstrual cycles but also foster miscarriages very early in pregnancy.

    By
  4. Health & Medicine

    Uranium, the newest ‘hormone’

    Animal experiments indicate that waterborne uranium can mimic the activity of estrogen, a female sex hormone.

    By
  5. Earth

    Can phthalates subtly alter boys?

    Researchers have linked a mom's exposure to phthalates with a genital marker in boys suggesting a subtle feminization of their reproductive organs.

    By
  6. Health & Medicine

    Heavy traffic may trigger heart attacks

    Exposure to traffic can dramatically increase a person's risk of having a heart attack soon afterward.

    By
  7. Planetary Science

    Riddles on Titan

    Two puzzles have emerged from the Cassini spacecraft's first close flyby of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

    By
  8. Physics

    Particle hunt off, collider comes down

    Despite tantalizing, last-minute hints of a long-sought, mass-giving particle called the Higgs boson, dismantling of the Large Electron-Positron collider has begun.

    By
  9. Physics

    Hot little levers write beaucoup bits

    Arrays of microscopic tips may offer a way to pack digital data more tightly and transfer it more quickly than is possible with magnetic hard disks.

    By
  10. Physics

    Light step toward quantum networks

    During the transfer of a quantum data bit from matter to light, a cloud of extremely cold atoms emitted a photon carrying a version of the cloud's quantum state.

    By
  11. Physics

    When all is a spin, calm is dragged in

    When laboratory vortices are mixed to create the equivalent of a tornado in a hurricane, the "hurricane" may gobble up spots of calm from the outside world.

    By
  12. Health & Medicine

    Marker signals esophageal cancer

    Silencing of the gene that encodes the cancer-suppressing protein APC is common in people with esophageal cancer, suggesting that physicians might use this genetic abnormality as a marker for the disease.

    By