News
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Heat-Seeking Missiles: Sperm may follow rising temperature to egg
In a process called thermotaxis, sperm cells may use a temperature gradient in the fallopian tubes to find their way to an unfertilized egg.
- Health & Medicine
Rackets and Radicals: Noise may cause gene damage in heart
Exposure to loud, continuous sound can scatter free radicals within heart tissue and cause injury to cells' DNA even after the din subsides, new animal research suggests.
- Chemistry
Shark Sense: Gel helps animals detect thermal fluctuations
New studies suggest that clear jelly under sharks' skin can enable the animals to detect minute changes in seawater temperature—potentially leading them to prey.
- Animals
Better Than Real: Males prefer flower’s scent to female wasp’s
In an extreme case of sex fakery, an orchid produces oddball chemicals to mimic a female wasp's allure so well that males prefer the flower scent to the real thing.
- Anthropology
Dairying Pioneers: Milk ran deep in prehistoric England
Chemical analyses of prehistoric pot fragments indicate that English farmers milked livestock beginning around 6,000 years ago, providing the earliest confirmed evidence of dairying anywhere in the world.
- Earth
Kilauea: 20 years on, it’s still erupting
As of Jan. 3, Kilauea—Hawaii’s Energizer Bunny of volcanic activity—has been erupting continuously for two decades.
- Chemistry
Sea bacteria may be new anticancer resource
Researchers examining deep-sea sediments have uncovered a large source of previously unknown bacteria that appear to produce disease-fighting chemicals.
- Health & Medicine
As population ages, flu takes deadly turn
The annual U.S. toll of influenza has risen dramatically since the late 1970s, in part because of the advancing age of the population.
- Planetary Science
New moons for Neptune?
Astronomers say they have discovered three additional moons circling Neptune.
- Astronomy
Gamma-ray burst leaves ephemeral afterglow
A ground-based telescope on automatic pilot has taken one of the earliest images ever recorded of the visible-light afterglow of a gamma-ray burst, one of the most energetic flashes of radiation in the universe.
- Health & Medicine
Clot promoter cuts surgical bleeding
A clot-promoting protein known as recombinant activated factor VII might offer a new way to staunch demand for blood transfusions.
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Psychiatric drugs surge among kids
The proportion of children and teenagers in the United States taking drugs prescribed for psychiatric disorders more than doubled from 1987 to 1996.
