News
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Some teens show signs of future depression
Certain characteristics typify teens who suffer recurrences of depression as young adults, raising researchers' hopes for devising improved depression treatments.
By Bruce Bower - Health & Medicine
Bacteria Provide a Frontline Defense
Bacteria genetically engineered to secrete microbe-killing compounds can fight disease in mice and rats.
By Nathan Seppa - Health & Medicine
Busy hospitals may not be best choice
A large number of heart surgeries done at a hospital doesn't always correlate with a low mortality rate from such operations at the facility.
By Nathan Seppa - Earth
Ice-dammed lakes had cooling effect
New computer simulations suggest that massive lakes in northern Russia—formed when an ice sheet blocked the northward flow of rivers about 90,000 years ago—significantly cooled the region's climate in summer months.
By Sid Perkins - Humans
Better protection from mad cow disease
The Food and Drug Administration has announced several new measures to keep meat that's potentially infected with mad cow disease out of food supplies.
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Surgery removes grenade from soldier’s head
Colombian military doctors extracted an intact grenade from the head of a teenage soldier.
By Ben Harder - Humans
The Chosen: A New Crop of Scientific Minds; Student science competition announces finalists
Forty high school students from 14 states and the District of Columbia have been selected to compete for the top prizes in the 2004 Intel Science Talent Search.
By Ben Harder - Animals
Vanishing Vultures: Bird deaths linked to vet-drug residues
The recent puzzling crash in vulture populations in Pakistan comes not from some new disease but from exposure to veterinary drug residues in livestock carcasses.
By Susan Milius - Materials Science
Pumping Carbon: Researchers watch nanofibers grow
The first atomic-scale movies of carbon nanofiber growth show particles of a metal catalyst pulsating wildly while carbon and metal atoms scuttle across the particle’s surface.
By Peter Weiss - Health & Medicine
Wine Surprise: Heart-protective effect is independent of antioxidants
Two studies in mice suggest that, if wine protects against heart disease, it's probably not because of the antioxidants that the drink contains.
- Health & Medicine
Good to the Bone: Strontium compound prevents some fractures
An experimental drug containing strontium makes bones denser and decreases the risk of fractures, a study of elderly women finds.
By Nathan Seppa - Planetary Science
Red Planet Roundup: Opportunity knocks; Spirit revives
The NASA rover Opportunity bounced onto an equatorial Martian plain early on Jan. 25 and found an intriguing outcropping of rocks on the other side of the planet from where its ailing but recovering twin, Spirit, had recently stalled.
By Ron Cowen