News
- Earth
Prenatal nicotine: A role in SIDS?
New data suggest why exposure to nicotine in the womb can put an infant at greater risk of sudden infant death syndrome.
- Health & Medicine
Little vessels react to magnetic switch
Magnets can act like vascular switches, increasing or decreasing blood flow to a region of the body.
- Earth
Traces of lead cause outsize harm
Minute amounts of lead in blood are worse for children than had been realized.
- Paleontology
Ancestors Go South
A group of new and previously excavated fossils in South Africa represents 4-million-year-old members of the human evolutionary family, according to an analysis of the sediment that covered the finds.
- Animals
Chicks open wide, ultraviolet mouths
The first analysis of what the mouths of begging birds look like in the ultraviolet spectrum reveals a dramatic display that birds can see but people can't.
- Physics
Answer blows in wind, swirls in soap
A swirling soap film gives new clues to how turbulent flows, such as the circulation of Earth's atmosphere, squander their energy.
- Astronomy
Telescope takes close-ups of distant star
Radio astronomers have for the first time probed ejected gas in the immediate surroundings of a distant star.
- Paleontology
Feathered fossil still stirs debate
More than 2 years after scientists first described 120-million-year-old fossils of a feathered animal, a new analysis seems to bolster the view that the turkey-size species was a bird has-been and not a bird wanna-be.
- Tech
Nanotechnologists get a squirt gun, almost
A novel computer simulation of molecular behavior suggests that a minuscule squirt gun able to spit liquids a few hundred nanometers ought to work.
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Skin cells reveal they have hairy origins
The outer layers of the skin may spring from cells in hair follicles.
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Study explores abortion’s mental aftermath
A majority of women report no increase in psychological problems after having an abortion, although nearly one in five express dissatisfaction and regret 2 years later about their decision.
- Astronomy
Young pulsar has a split personality
A new pulsar, the youngest discovered to date, unexpectedly exhibits properties of both regular pulsars and a recently explored class of supermagnetic pulsars, the magnetars.
