News
- 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.
- 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 David Shiga - 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 Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Uranium, the newest ‘hormone’
Animal experiments indicate that waterborne uranium can mimic the activity of estrogen, a female sex hormone.
By Janet Raloff - 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 Janet Raloff - 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.
- Planetary Science
Riddles on Titan
Two puzzles have emerged from the Cassini spacecraft's first close flyby of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
By Ron Cowen - 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 Science News - 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 Peter Weiss - 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 Peter Weiss - 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 Peter Weiss - 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 Nathan Seppa