News
- Tech
Engineered crystal obeys inner bananas
Flexing new skills at custom-designing crystals, researchers built a specific optical trait into a new organic crystal by tinkering with the shape of one of the crystal's constituent molecules.
- Tech
Many-armed magnets reveal stem cells
Novel particles that combine magnetic crystals and many-branched polymers may permit doctors to track stem cells in people by using standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners.
- Materials Science
Can ancient stone avoid salt attacks?
Researchers have found that a polymer coating can protect stone from damage caused by growing crystals.
- Materials Science
Carbon nanotubes turn on water flow
Computer simulations show that water molecules will quicklye nter and flow along a carbon nanotube just 8 nanometers in diameter.
- Astronomy
Galileo catches Io in a slump
Galileo spacecraft images show for the first time that material has slid downward along a cliff on Jupiter's moon Io.
- Astronomy
Observing the sun’s magnetic pull
A spacecraft studying the sun has spotted clouds of gas that seem to be headed the wrong way, falling back toward the solar surface instead of continuing to move outward with the stream of charged particles known as the solar wind.
- Astronomy
A night of shooting stars
Thousands of people in North America who got up early on Nov. 18 were treated to a memorable sky show: White, yellow, blue, and green fireballs, some leaving behind smoke trails, streaked across the sky.
- Health & Medicine
Sometimes lying down is harder work
Squatting or standing might ease baby delivery by allowing the birth canal more room to expand.
- Health & Medicine
Ultrasound boosts drug delivery to tumors
A beam of ultrasound can make the blood vessels that infiltrate cancerous growths leakier than normal.
- Health & Medicine
Weak appetite in elderly ties to hormone
A hormone known to suppress appetite is more abundant in seniors than in young adults and has a greater effect in squelching hunger in elderly people.
- Animals
Unknown squids—with elbows—tease science
Glimpses from around the world suggest that the ocean depths hold novel, long-armed squids that belong in no known family.
- Earth
Forest-soil fungi emit gases that harm ozone layer
Laboratory tests reveal for the first time that certain types of common fungi can produce ozone-destroying methyl halide gases.
