News
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Giardia Bares All: Parasite genes reveal long sexual history
Sexual reproduction started billions of years ago, as soon as life forms that have nuclei and organelles within their cells branched off from their structurally simpler ancestors.
- Health & Medicine
Urine test signals pregnancy problem
A simple urine test can warn women that they have an increased risk of preeclampsia, a dangerous complication of pregnancy.
- Tech
Congealing useful oddballs
A device for manipulating liquid droplets turns out to have the unexpected ability to fabricate tiny, solid balls with unusual, and potentially useful, patterned structures inside.
- Chemistry
Building artificial cells from scratch
Scientists have created artificial cells that can live and produce proteins as their natural counterparts do, but can't replicate.
- Tech
Thrifty trucks go with the flow
Forcing air through strategically placed slits on a tractor trailer results in a major boost in fuel economy.
- Earth
Early Warning: United States to deploy 32 more buoys for sensing tsunamis
On Jan. 14, the Bush administration announced a $37.5 million program to expand the nation's tsunami-warning capabilities.
- Tech
Micro Musclebot: Wee walker moves by heart cells’ beats
A new breed of mobile micromachine made of living heart tissue, gold, and silicon takes a step with each rhythmic contraction of its muscle cells.
- Materials Science
Infrared Vision: New material may enhance plastic solar cells
The vision of flexible, low-cost, lightweight plastic solar cells has moved one step closer to reality with the creation of a material that can harness infrared light.
- Ecosystems
Bivalve Takeover: Once-benign clams boom after crab influx
European green crabs invading a California bay have triggered a population explosion of a previously marginal clam.
- Astronomy
Black Hole Bonanza: 10,000 objects near our galaxy’s center
Astronomers have found the first evidence of a suspected population of black holes near the Milky Way's center, each hole with 10 times the mass of the sun.
- Paleontology
Pieces of an Ancestor: African site yields new look at ancient species
Fossils unearthed at sites in eastern Africa provide a rare look at Ardipithecus ramidus, a member of the human evolutionary family that lived more than 4 million years ago.
- Planetary Science
A World Unveiled: Crème brûlée on Titan
Penetrating the orange haze of a frigid, alien world, a space probe parachuted onto Saturn's moon Titan and unexpectedly came face-to-face with terrain that looks a lot like Earth.
