News
- Health & Medicine
Vaccine protects monkeys from Ebola virus
A combination of a DNA vaccine and a vaccine based on a genetically modified common cold virus enables monkeys to resist Ebola virus, the first evidence that an Ebola vaccine works in primates.
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Certain memories may rest on a good sleep
People who practice a task that demands quick visual processing perform it better on ensuing trials if they are first allowed to get some sleep.
- Planetary Science
An early cosmic wallop for life on Earth?
New evidence from lunar meteorites suggests that debris bombarded the moon some 3.9 billion years ago, about the same time that life may have formed on Earth.
- Math
Prime proof zeros in on crucial numbers
A new theorem may lead to a proof of Catalan's conjecture, a venerable problem in number theory concerning consecutive powers of whole numbers.
- Animals
First mammal joins the eusocial club
Because naked mole rats exhibit permanent physical traits that distinguish certain castes of a colony, they belong to the same grouping as so-called eusocial insects such as bees, ants, wasps, and termites.
- Earth
Life Landed 2.6 Billion Years Ago
Unusually carbon-rich rocks found in eastern South Africa may push back the evidence of life on land to 2.6 billion years ago, more than twice the current age of indisputably terrestrial organisms.
- Health & Medicine
Dormant Cancer: Lack of a protein sends tumor cells to bed
Excess amounts of a protein called Myc triggers cancer in mice, but ratcheting back this supply sends the malignant cells into dormancy.
- Earth
Change in the Weather? Wind farms might affect local climates
Large groups of power-generating windmills could increase wind speed, temperature, and ground-level evaporation, thereby influencing a region's climate.
- Health & Medicine
Fat Fuels PCB Damage: Diet influences toxic effects leading to heart disease
Certain types of dietary fats can magnify PCB damage to artery cells in a way that sets the stage for cardiovascular disease.
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Hearing Better in the Dark: Blindness fuels ability to place distant sounds
New evidence indicates that blind people estimate the locations of distant sounds more accurately than sighted people do, even if sight loss didn't occur until adolescence or young adulthood.
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A.M. and P.M. Clocks: Fruit fly brain has double timekeepers
Two research teams have pinpointed one group of fly-brain neurons keeping time for morning activity and a different neuron group performing the same function for evening activity.
- Chemistry
Breakdown: How Three Chemists Took the Prize
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists for their discovery of how cells mark proteins for destruction with a molecular tag called ubiquitin, otherwise known as the kiss of death.
