News
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Earth
Dust Up: Office bustle launches anthrax spores
The commotion of everyday business in indoor spaces contaminated with anthrax can launch the bacterium's dangerous spores into the air.
By Ben Harder -
Planetary Science
Martian History: Weathering a new notion
Researchers suggest that intermittent impacts by huge asteroids and comets some 3.5 billion years ago profoundly influenced the landscape of Mars.
By Ron Cowen -
Health & Medicine
First-Line Treatment: Chronic-leukemia drug clears a big hurdle
In its first large-scale test on newly diagnosed leukemia patients, the drug imatinib—also called Gleevec and STI-571—stopped or reversed the disease in nearly all patients receiving it.
By Nathan Seppa -
Physics
Identity Check: Elusive neutrinos morph on Earth, as in space
Strengthening a challenge to the prevailing theory of particle physics, measurements of elusive particles called antineutrinos from nuclear reactors suggest that no neutrino types, be they matter or antimatter, have stable identities.
By Peter Weiss -
Health & Medicine
Visionary science for the intestine
A tiny disposable flash camera that a person swallows can detect problems in the small intestine.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & Medicine
Bone scan reveals estrogen effects
Using a scanning technology called microcomputerized tomography, scientists have a new way to look at the difference between bone exposed to estrogen and bone deprived of it.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & Medicine
Common antibiotic may cure river blindness
Tests in cows suggest that tetracycline might kill the tiny worm that spreads river blindness, a disease that infects about 18 million people.
By Nathan Seppa -
Tech
Satellite links may don quantum cloaks
A theoretically foolproof scheme to shield secrets via the laws of quantum mechanics demonstrates its readiness to take on Earth-satellite communications.
By Peter Weiss -
Earth
Excreted Drugs: Something Looks Fishy
Drugs that the body can't fully use enter waste water, where they may affect aquatic life—or wind up in tap water.
By Janet Raloff -
Health & Medicine
Imaging Parkinson’s
A new brain-imaging technique can supply proof of Parkinson's disease in people whose symptoms fall short of the standard definition of the disease.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & Medicine
Zapping bone brings relief from tumor pain
By unleashing radio waves inside bone, researchers have stopped intractable pain in people with cancer that has spread to their skeletons.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & Medicine
Bilirubin: Both villain and hero?
Bilirubin, which causes jaundice in newborns, may protect against cellular damage.
By John Travis