News

Health & Medicine

Death of a theory

Three separate analyses of oral polio vaccine used in the 1950s in Africa deflate the theory that such a vaccine could have ignited the AIDS epidemic by containing virus-infected chimpanzee cells.

Health & Medicine

Gene therapy cures blindness in dogs

Gene therapy to replace a defective RPE65 gene succeeds in bringing sight to three blind dogs, suggesting such therapy might reverse Leber congenital amauosis, a rare condition in which children are blind from birth.

Health & Medicine

New anthrax treatment works in rats

By distorting a protein in the toxin that makes the anthrax bacterium deadly, scientists have discovered a promising way to treat the disease and possibly even to prevent it with a vaccine.

Health & Medicine

Tamoxifen dilates arteries in men

The breast cancer drug tamoxifen can widen a narrowed coronary artery in men with heart problems.

Health & Medicine

Long-term ecstasy use impairs memory

Extended use of the illicit drug called MDMA or ecstasy exacerbated memory problems in users aged 17 to 31, none of whom reported alcohol dependence.

Health & Medicine

Peptide puts mouse arthritis out of joint

A compound called vasointestinal peptide, which binds to immune system T cells and macrophages, thwarts arthritis in mice.

Astronomy

Have scientists seen planets in the making?

Astronomers may finally have glimpsed a key step in the construction of a planet.

Earth

Even low lead in kids has a high IQ cost

Lead can damage a young child's ability to learn and reason at exposures far lower than the limit deemed acceptable by the U.S. government.

Physics

New probe reveals unfamiliar inner proton

Researchers taking one of the closest looks yet into the intact proton have found an unexpectedly complex interior electromagnetic environment.

Health & Medicine

Epileptic seizures may be predictable

Patterns of mild electrical disturbance in the brains of epilepsy patients appear to foreshadow a seizure hours before its onset.