News
- Health & Medicine
Why beer may deter blood clots
Downing a beer a day alters the structure of fibrinogen, a blood protein active in clotting.
- Archaeology
Grave surprise rises in Jamestown fort
Excavations in the 17th-century fort at Jamestown, Va., have yielded a grave containing the skeleton of a high-ranking male colonist.
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Sleepers yield memorable brain images
Rapid-eye-movement sleep may help consolidate some newly acquired memories, brain scans suggest.
- Astronomy
Dead stars may masquerade as ingenues
A heavenly deception in which dead stars lie about their ages could throw into disarray theories describing some of the densest objects in the cosmos.
- Health & Medicine
Edible vaccine spawns antibodies to virus
Genetically engineered potatoes can deliver an edible vaccine against Norwalk virus, a common diarrhea-causing pathogen.
- Earth
Greenland’s ice is thinner at the margins
The central portion of Greenland's ice sheet is, on the whole, not getting any thinner, but most margins of the ice sheet are thinning substantially and contributing to rising sea levels.
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E. coli toxin shows its deadly touch
A toxin from a bacterium that causes food poisoning appears to kill cells by interacting with a protein called Bcl-2.
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Sexual orientation linked to handedness
A metanalysis reveals right-handedness is more common among heterosexuals than homosexuals, suggesting a neurobiological basis for sexual orientation.
- Animals
Flowers, not flirting, make sexes differ
Thanks to lucky circumstances, bird researchers find rare evidence that food, not sex appeal, makes some male and female hummingbirds look different.
- Physics
Device Sees More inside Live Cells
A new type of optical microscope, which can discern objects smaller than a supposedly fundamental limit for visible-light viewing, may make it possible to see finer details of the insides of living cells.
- Earth
Ancient Taint: Likely source of old dioxins identified
Lab experiments show that the burning of peat from coastal areas of Scotland could be responsible for the enigmatic concentrations of dioxins sometimes found in pre-20th-century soils.
- Humans
Jonathan Eberhart (1942–2003)
After chronicling space science and exploration for 3 decades on behalf of Science News, Jonathan Eberhart died last week from complications of multiple sclerosis.
