News
- Humans
Nobel prizes: The sweet smell of success
Nobel prizes in the sciences went to research on olfactory genes, subatomic particles, and the molecular kiss of death.
- Animals
Separate Vacations: Birds winter apart but return in sync
Mated pairs of black-tailed godwits may fly off to winter refuges a thousand kilometers apart but can still arrive back at their breeding site the next spring within a few days of each other.
- Tech
Dawn of the commercial space age
On Oct. 4, a privately funded, piloted craft called SpaceShipOne reached a height of 378,000 feet (115.1 kilometers), breaking a world altitude record for rocket-powered planes and claiming the $10 million Ansari X prize.
- Astronomy
Planet Signs? Sifting a dusty disk
Infrared spectra of a disk of debris surrounding the young star Beta Pictoris reveals three distinct bands of dust, suggesting the location of a possible planet flanked by belts of asteroids or comets.
- Health & Medicine
Carotid Overhaul: Stents and surgery go neck and neck
Mesh cylinders called stents work as well as or slightly better than surgery in opening blocked carotid arteries in high-risk patients.
- Earth
Global warming won’t boost carbon storage in tundra
The notion that a warmer climate in arctic regions will lead to enhanced carbon sequestration in tundra ecosystems isn't supported by field data.
- Physics
Hurrying a nuclear identity switch
Radioactive beryllium-7 atoms locked inside molecular cages decay extraordinarily quickly.
- Health & Medicine
Turmeric component kills cancer cells
Curcumin, the component of turmeric that makes the spice yellow, shows anticancer effects in lab-dish tests and in experiments on mice.
- Health & Medicine
Fighting cholesterol with saturated fat?
Marrying a saturated fat to the plant-derived ingredient in certain health-promoting margarines creates an especially potent cholesterol-lowering food additive.
-
Car deaths rise days after terror attacks
A spike in automobile fatalities in Israel 3 days after each of a recent series of terrorist attacks reflects a delayed, population-wide reaction to those violent incidents, two researchers propose.
- Health & Medicine
Adopted protein might be MS culprit
A protein called syncytin might play a role in causing degradation of the fatty myelin sheath that insulates nerves, damage that leads to multiple sclerosis.
- Astronomy
More space sugar
Astronomers have found a second, colder source of the simple sugar glycoaldehyde in a dust and gas cloud 26,000 light-years from Earth.
