News
- Astronomy
The smashup that rejuvenates
For some elderly stars, the fountain of youth may be only a collision away.
- Tech
Watching the Big Wheelers: In sea of cars, trucks reveal traffic flow
A new way to sense traffic jams more quickly tracks the motion of trucks within the overall traffic flow.
- Materials Science
Making Polymers That Self-Destruct: Layers break apart in controlled way
A new polymer film chews itself apart under certain conditions, making it a potential candidate for the controlled delivery of therapeutic drugs.
- Health & Medicine
Blood sugar processing tied to brain problems
Elderly people with slightly elevated blood sugar are more likely to have short-term memory problems than those with normal blood sugar.
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Working Out: Welfare reform hasn’t changed kids so far
A study conducted among low-income families in three states suggests that the emotional health and academic skills of preschoolers and young adolescents don't suffer when their mothers move off welfare and into the workforce.
- Earth
Slippin’ Slide: Glaciers surge after ice shelf collapses
Five of the six large glaciers that once fed into Antarctica's Larsen A ice shelf have sped up significantly since that floating ice mass collapsed and drifted away in January 1995.
- Health & Medicine
Ulcer Clue? Molecule could be key to stomach ailment
A protein called Ptprz binds with a bacterial toxin to produce ulcers in mice, possibly revealing a mechanism for the disorder.
- Astronomy
Death of a pioneer
Pioneer 10, the first spacecraft to reach the fringes of the solar system, appears to have sent its last feeble signal to Earth on Jan. 22.
- Health & Medicine
Light could be therapy against blindness
Beaming red light at rats soon after they've drunk methanol partially protects their eyes against that chemical's blinding effects.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Doomsday Scenario: Phantom energy would trigger the Big Rip
According to a new model, the universe may end with a Big Rip—every galaxy, star, planet, molecule, and atom torn asunder and the cosmos ceasing to exist some 21 billion years from now.
- Humans
Doctoral seesaw
Throughout most of the 1990s, the number of doctoral degrees that U.S. universities awarded in science and engineering climbed steadily, to 27,300 in 1998, but by 2001, the number had dropped to 25,500, the lowest number since 1993.
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Feline Finding: Mutations produce black house cats, jaguars
Mutations in two different genes, which lead to black fur in house cats, jaguars, and jaguarundis, may have protected the black felines from an epidemic long ago.
