News

  1. Baby Facial: Infants monkey with face recognition

    Between ages 6 months and 9 months, babies apparently lose the ability to discriminate between the faces of individuals in different animal species and start to develop an expertise in discerning human faces.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Liquid could aid vaccine storage and use

    A new medium for vaccines could remove the need to either refrigerate or rehydrate vaccines, hurdles that impede immunization campaigns in poor countries.

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  3. Health & Medicine

    Beating two infections with one vaccine

    Identifying key similarities between related viruses could enable researchers to coax some vaccines to do double duty.

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  4. In depression, the placebo also rises

    In a small group of depressed patients, those whose condition improved after taking placebo pills for 6 weeks displayed many of the same brain changes observed in people who benefited from an antidepressant drug.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Spice component versus cancer cells

    Curcumin, a compound in the spice turmeric, teams up with an immune-system protein to kill prostate cancer cells in a new laboratory study.

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  6. Earth

    Honey may pose hidden toxic risk

    Many honeys may contain potentially toxic traces of potent liver-damaging compounds produced naturally by a broad range of flowering plants.

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  7. Animals

    No Tickling: Common caterpillars deploy defensive hair

    The caterpillars of the European cabbage butterfly have a chemical defense system that scientists haven't documented before.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Feel the Burn: Alcohol sets pain-sensing nerves aflame

    Alcohol makes certain pain-generating nerves trigger more easily than normal.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Hidden Damage: Parkinson’s harm to nerves in heart may explain dizziness and fainting

    Parkinson's disease patients have damaged nerve endings in the heart, kidneys, and thyroid gland, suggesting the disease harms the autonomic nervous system that regulates involuntary functions of these and other organs and glands.

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  10. Astronomy

    Heavenly Taffy: Galaxies in collision

    Astronomers have discovered a pair of colliding galaxies connected by a bridge of high-speed electrons and elongated magnetic fields.

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  11. Chemistry

    Minimotor: Single molecule does some work

    A single molecule has performed mechanical work—pulling and releasing a cantilever tip—when exposed to light.

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  12. Physics

    Unexpected Boost: A superconductivity killer’s silver lining

    Among superconductors—materials able to conduct electricity without resistance—an effect that normally diminishes current-carrying ability surprisingly turns out to sometimes enhance it.

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