News
- 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 - Health & Medicine
Is penicillin-allergy rate overstated?
A study finds that 20 of 21 people who reported having a penicillin allergy when filling out paperwork during a hospital visit in fact don't have one, suggesting that the prevalence of this allergy is overstated.
By Nathan Seppa -
Man’s brain incurs disgusting loss
A brain-damaged man yields clues to the neural organization responsible for experiencing disgust.
By Bruce Bower