News
- Health & Medicine
Two arthritis drugs work best in tandem
Two anti-inflammatory drugs for rheumatoid arthritis—methotrexate and etanercept—work better together than either does individually.
- Earth
Pompeii debris yields calamity clues
The magnetic characteristics of rocks and debris excavated from Pompeii reveal the changing temperatures of the volcanic ash cloud that smothered the Italian city in A.D. 79.
- Anthropology
Extinct ancestor wasn’t so finicky
Contrary to much anthropological thought, the genus Paranthropus showed as much dietary and behavioral flexibility as ancient Homo species did between 3 million and 1 million years ago.
- Earth
Deep Pacific waters warmed in recent years
Oceanographic data gathered across the North Pacific in 1985 and again in 1999 indicate that the deepest waters there have been heating up.
- Chemistry
New champions among corrosive microbes
Newly discovered strains of bacteria have developed a metabolic shortcut for eating away iron with great efficiency.
- Materials Science
Cinching nanotubes into tough fibers
Irradiating bundles of carbon nanotubes can lead to tougher fibers.
- Physics
Radioactive sprinkles keep machines true
Needing tiny radioactive sources to calibrate medical scanners with ever-sharper vision, an Australian team dipped tiny balls the size of candy sprinkles into a radioactive liquid.
- Earth
Lowering the Boom? Impact crater may predate extinction of the dinosaurs
Analyses of sediments from the Yucatán in Mexico suggest that an extraterrestrial impact there more than 65 million years ago actually happened about 300,000 years before mass extinctions of dinosaurs occurred.
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Worst of Two Worlds: Hybrid mosquitoes spread West Nile virus
Interbreeding between two Old World mosquito species may explain why their blood-sucking brethren in the United States transmit West Nile virus to people as readily as they do.
- Physics
Bubble Fusion: Once-maligned claim rebounds
Researchers who reported 2 years ago that they created nuclear-fusion reactions inside bubbles imploding in a vat of liquid acetone have now bolstered their controversial claim with new evidence.
- Anthropology
Early Ancestors Come Together: Humanity’s roots may lie in single, diverse genus
Newly discovered fossil teeth in eastern Africa that are more than 5 million years old suggest that the earliest members of the human family evolved as a single, anatomically diverse genus.
- Animals
Jungle Genes: First bird genome is decoded
Researchers have unveiled a draft of the first bird genome to be sequenced, a vintage chicken.
