News
- Health & Medicine
Magnets, my foot!
Shoe inserts with magnets have no more effect against foot pain than insoles without them.
- Earth
Smog chemicals found even in rural western plains
Analyses of the atmosphere over the south-central United States show that gases emitted from the region's oil and natural gas industries contribute to air pollution—even over remote Kansas cornfields—that can surpass the noxious mix found in urban areas.
- Health & Medicine
Danger, danger, cry injured cells
Damaged cells may release uric acid to rouse the immune system.
- Planetary Science
To the moon, European style
The European Space Agency launched its first lunar mission, which is scheduled to reach the moon in 2005 and will search for water that may lie in the moon's permanently shadowed craters.
- Health & Medicine
Do Arctic diets protect prostates?
Marine diets appear to explain why the incidence of prostate cancer among Inuit men is lower than that of males anywhere else in the world.
- Paleontology
Reptile remains fill in fossil record
The fossil remains of a sphenodontian, an ancient, lizardlike reptile, are helping fill a 120-million-year-old gap between this creature's ancestors and today's tuatara, sole survivors of the once prominent group.
- Earth
Toxic Controversy: Perchlorate found in milk, but risk is debated
Researchers in Texas have detected the chemical perchlorate in milk, crops, and a significant portion of the state's groundwater.
- Humans
Nobel prizes go to scientists harnessing odd phenomena
The 2003 Nobel prizes in the sciences were announced early this week.
- Neuroscience
Restoring Recall: Memories may form and reform, with sleep
Two new studies indicate that memories, at least for skills learned in a laboratory, undergo a process of storage and restorage that depends critically on sleep.
- Animals
Bad Bubbles: Could sonar give whales the bends?
Odd bubbles of fat and gas have turned up in the bodies of marine mammals, raising the question of whether something about human activity in the oceans could give these deep divers decompression sickness.
- Tech
Special Delivery: Metallic nanorods shuttle genes
A new gene therapy technique relies on nanorods made of gold and nickel to deliver genes to cells in the body.
- Astronomy
Super Data: Hail the cosmic revolution
Ten extremely distant supernovas recently discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope provide evidence that something is pushing objects in the cosmos apart at an ever-faster rate.
