News
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Health & Medicine
Pregnancy Woe Uncovered: Protein may underlie preeclampsia
New evidence links a placental protein to preeclampsia symptoms and may lead to new ways of detecting and treating the disease.
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Health & Medicine
Portrait of a cancer drug at work
Newly revealed protein structures show how a breast cancer drug functions.
By John Travis -
Health & Medicine
Why beer may deter blood clots
Downing a beer a day alters the structure of fibrinogen, a blood protein active in clotting.
By Janet Raloff -
Archaeology
Grave surprise rises in Jamestown fort
Excavations in the 17th-century fort at Jamestown, Va., have yielded a grave containing the skeleton of a high-ranking male colonist.
By Bruce Bower -
Sleepers yield memorable brain images
Rapid-eye-movement sleep may help consolidate some newly acquired memories, brain scans suggest.
By Bruce Bower -
Astronomy
Dead stars may masquerade as ingenues
A heavenly deception in which dead stars lie about their ages could throw into disarray theories describing some of the densest objects in the cosmos.
By Ron Cowen -
Health & Medicine
Edible vaccine spawns antibodies to virus
Genetically engineered potatoes can deliver an edible vaccine against Norwalk virus, a common diarrhea-causing pathogen.
By Nathan Seppa -
Earth
Greenland’s ice is thinner at the margins
The central portion of Greenland's ice sheet is, on the whole, not getting any thinner, but most margins of the ice sheet are thinning substantially and contributing to rising sea levels.
By Sid Perkins -
E. coli toxin shows its deadly touch
A toxin from a bacterium that causes food poisoning appears to kill cells by interacting with a protein called Bcl-2.
By John Travis -
Sexual orientation linked to handedness
A metanalysis reveals right-handedness is more common among heterosexuals than homosexuals, suggesting a neurobiological basis for sexual orientation.
By Ruth Bennett -
Animals
Flowers, not flirting, make sexes differ
Thanks to lucky circumstances, bird researchers find rare evidence that food, not sex appeal, makes some male and female hummingbirds look different.
By Susan Milius -
Physics
Device Sees More inside Live Cells
A new type of optical microscope, which can discern objects smaller than a supposedly fundamental limit for visible-light viewing, may make it possible to see finer details of the insides of living cells.
By Peter Weiss