News
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Health & Medicine
Little vessels react to magnetic switch
Magnets can act like vascular switches, increasing or decreasing blood flow to a region of the body.
By Janet Raloff -
Earth
Traces of lead cause outsize harm
Minute amounts of lead in blood are worse for children than had been realized.
By Ben Harder -
Paleontology
Ancestors Go South
A group of new and previously excavated fossils in South Africa represents 4-million-year-old members of the human evolutionary family, according to an analysis of the sediment that covered the finds.
By Bruce Bower -
Animals
Chicks open wide, ultraviolet mouths
The first analysis of what the mouths of begging birds look like in the ultraviolet spectrum reveals a dramatic display that birds can see but people can't.
By Susan Milius -
Physics
Answer blows in wind, swirls in soap
A swirling soap film gives new clues to how turbulent flows, such as the circulation of Earth's atmosphere, squander their energy.
By Peter Weiss -
Astronomy
Telescope takes close-ups of distant star
Radio astronomers have for the first time probed ejected gas in the immediate surroundings of a distant star.
By Ron Cowen -
Paleontology
Feathered fossil still stirs debate
More than 2 years after scientists first described 120-million-year-old fossils of a feathered animal, a new analysis seems to bolster the view that the turkey-size species was a bird has-been and not a bird wanna-be.
By Sid Perkins -
Tech
Nanotechnologists get a squirt gun, almost
A novel computer simulation of molecular behavior suggests that a minuscule squirt gun able to spit liquids a few hundred nanometers ought to work.
By Peter Weiss -
Skin cells reveal they have hairy origins
The outer layers of the skin may spring from cells in hair follicles.
By John Travis -
Study explores abortion’s mental aftermath
A majority of women report no increase in psychological problems after having an abortion, although nearly one in five express dissatisfaction and regret 2 years later about their decision.
By Bruce Bower -
Astronomy
Young pulsar has a split personality
A new pulsar, the youngest discovered to date, unexpectedly exhibits properties of both regular pulsars and a recently explored class of supermagnetic pulsars, the magnetars.
By Ruth Bennett -
Health & Medicine
DNA vaccine immunizes fetal lambs
Canadian scientists have devised a way to vaccinate fetal lambs, which could spawn more research into in utero methods for preventing the spread of disease from mothers to their babies.
By Nathan Seppa