News
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Health & Medicine
Bilirubin: Both villain and hero?
Bilirubin, which causes jaundice in newborns, may protect against cellular damage.
- Astronomy
Sizing up small stars
Astronomers have for the first time measured with high precision the size of a small star, Proxima Centauri, the known star nearest to the solar system.
- Physics
Icicle waves go with the flow
A new model of icicle growth may explain the strange fact that ripples often found on those icy spikes typically sit about 1 centimeter apart, whether the icicles themselves are big or small.
- Earth
Getting to know carbon
A new research initiative will focus on the complex life of carbon as it cycles through Earth's land, water, and atmosphere.
- Earth
Forecast: Heavy winds, plasma showers
A new spacecraft has snapped the first images of a region of ionized gases in Earth's magnetic field.
- Health & Medicine
An alternate approach to Parkinson’s
While levodopa is the treatment of choice for Parkinson's disease, drugs called dopamine agonists, which mimic the neurotransmitter dopamine, may work as well early in the disease, cause fewer side effects, and preserve levodopa's effectiveness.
- Health & Medicine
Bypass surgery in elderly works fine
Coronary bypass surgery works as well in people over age 75 as it does in people 15 years younger.
