News

  1. Earth

    Dioxin-type carcinogens pose additive risks

    Pollutants known as dioxins, furans, and certain chemically related polychlorinated biphenyls have additive cancer-causing effects when mixed together, as has been assumed in calculating the chemicals' health risks.

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  2. Astronomy

    Renegade stars in sun’s neighborhood

    Some stars in the neighborhood of the sun may be renegades from the center of our galaxy.

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  3. Health & Medicine

    Childhood trauma raises risk of heart disease

    A childhood filled with psychological or physical tribulations contributes to one's risk of developing heart disease as an adult.

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  4. Materials Science

    Anyone want to knit a microscopic sweater?

    Microscopic polymer tubes can tangle themselves into a new and possibly useful structure—tiny "yarn balls" that flatten out and partly unravel in an electric field.

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  5. Paleontology

    Fossil birds sport a new kind of feather

    Two fossil specimens of a primitive, starling-size bird that lived about 125 million years ago have tail feathers that may hold the clues to how feathers originated.

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  6. Earth

    Chalk reveals greatest underwater landslide

    Seismic waves generated by an extraterrestrial object crashing into Mexico 65 million years ago appear to have sent sediment from shallow waters sliding off the continental shelf.

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  7. Language goes beyond sight, sound in brain

    Two brain areas long considered crucial for perceiving and speaking words also spring into action in deaf people who are using sign language or watching others do so.

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  8. Tech

    Tiny tubes could ease eavesdropping

    A team of researchers is developing highly sensitive acoustic sensors using ordered arrays of carbon nanotubes, which act much like the rodlike stereocilia of the inner ear.

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  9. Planetary Science

    Mars Views Hint at Early Land of Lakes

    New, high-resolution images unveiled this week not only offer supporting evidence that parts of ancient Mars resembled a land of lakes but also point out prime locations to look for fossils if life ever existed on the Red Planet.

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  10. Astronomy

    Messy Findings: Planets encounter a violent world

    Some young planets continue to take a beating hundreds of millions of years after they've formed.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    A Problem of Adhesion: More evidence of sickle-cell stickiness

    Interrupted blood flow in people with sickle-cell disease might arise from stickiness inherent in the unusual red blood cells these individuals have.

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  12. Paleontology

    Early Bird: Fossil features hint at go-get-’em hatchlings

    A well-preserved, 121-million-year-old fossilized bird embryo has several features that suggest that the species' young could move about and feed themselves very soon after they hatched.

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