News
- Health & Medicine
Hysterectomy often improves sex life
A study of more than 1,000 women who had hysterectomies finds that after the operation, women generally wanted and had sex more often, were more likely to reach orgasm, experienced less vaginal dryness, and were less likely to have pain during sex than was the case before surgery.
- Materials Science
Tiny gems on steps find future in films
The discovery of diamond-crystal seeds on steps in silicon may lead to long-sought, large wafers of pure, single-crystal diamond for electronics and other uses.
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The moon also rises—and assumes new sizes
The perplexing human tendency to perceive a moon on the horizon as larger than an elevated moon may arise from visual cues indicating that the horizon moon is located much farther away.
- Health & Medicine
Glutamate glut linked to multiple sclerosis
The chemical glutamate can overwhelm nervous-system cells called oligodendrocytes, adding to the nerve damage caused by wayward immune cells in multiple sclerosis.
- Physics
Electrical superball pulls itself together
A strong electric field can drive tiny particles of a superconductor to bind themselves together into a remarkably sturdy ball.
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Blood cues sex choice for parasites
Malaria parasites shift their female-biased production of offspring toward a more evenly balanced sex ratio as an infection proceeds.
- Health & Medicine
Learning from leprosy’s nerve damage
The bacterium that causes leprosy directly damages a protective sheathing around many nerve cells.
- Ecosystems
Famine reveals incredible shrinking iguanas
Marine iguanas in the Galápagos Islands are the first vertebrates known to reduce their size during a food shortage and then regrow to their original body lengths.
- Environment
Old thermometers pose new problems
Though health groups advocate getting mercury thermometers out of the home, obtaining sound advice on how to dispose of the thermometers can be problematic.
- Earth
Algae Turn Fish into a Lethal Lunch
Scientists demonstrated that some marine mammals have died from eating fish tainted with a neurotoxic diatom.
- Earth
Most oil enters sea from nonaccidents
Nearly all of the oil entering the marine environment traces not to accidents but to natural seeps and human activities where releases are intentional.
- Physics
Matter waves: Be fruitful and multiply
For the first time, physicists induced atoms to amplify a selected matter wave in a manner analogous to a cascade of photons amplifying the characteristic electromagnetic wave of an optical laser.
