News
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Gene variations police the storage of fat
Researchers have uncovered genetic variations controlling a calorie-draining spigot in the body.
- Earth
Salmon hatcheries can deplete wild stocks
Hatchery fish appear to be replacing wild salmon populations in the Columbia River.
- Planetary Science
Asteroid Eros poses a magnetic puzzle
Measurements with a magnetometer aboard the NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft a few days after it landed on the asteroid 433 Eros confirmed a major puzzle: The rock has no detectable magnetic field.
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Insects deploy sticky feet with precision
Sticky ant and bee footpads retract and unfold in time with insect steps, so the insects don't trip over their own sticky feet.
- Health & Medicine
Does breast-feeding accelerate AIDS?
A study of HIV-infected mothers in Kenya suggests that breast-feeding places them at a health risk.
- Chemistry
Molecular Chemistry Takes a New Twist
New calculations show that a basic tenet of chemistry is wrong: Ethane forms its most stable structure not due to so-called steric effects, but because of a quantum mechanical influence.
- Physics
Stretching and twisting a bright idea
A new, stretchy type of liquid-crystal component makes it possible to change a laser's color by simply pulling on the membrane—a much easier, cheaper means of adjustment than that used for today's complex and expensive tunable lasers.
- Physics
In a squeeze, nitrogen gets chunky
Remarkable already for being a semiconductor and, perhaps, an explosive, a new, solid form of nitrogen made by crushing the ordinary gas to the highest pressures ever also stands out because it continues to survive when the pressure is released.
- Physics
Electrons trip on tiny semiconductor steps
A first glimpse of how a semiconductor's surface alters electrons' magnetic fields, or spins, suggests that tiny steps in the surfaces are tripping up efforts to create so-called spintronics circuits from semiconductors.
- Health & Medicine
Genetic flaw found in painful gut disease
Scientists have discovered a genetic mutation that occurs in people with Crohn's disease, a digestive disorder that attacks the intestines.
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Slave-making ants get rough in New York
The whole ant slave-making business turns more violent in New York than in West Virginia, even though it features the same species.
- Health & Medicine
Poliovirus slaughters brain tumors in mice
Scientists have altered a live polio virus, inducing it to target and kill brain tumor cells without causing polio.
