News

Health & Medicine

Vision: The risks of being too fat or too tall

Excess weight or height can have a blinding impact, fostering the development of cataracts.

Paleontology

Genes Seem to Link Unlikely Relatives

Genetic markers on three proteins suggest a common African ancestor for elephants, aardvarks, elephant shrews, golden moles, and other animals.

Planetary Science

Ganymede May Have Vast Hidden Ocean

A combination of images, spectra, and magnetic field measurements suggests that in addition to Jupiter's moon Europa, another Jovian moon, Ganymede, may also have had—and might still harbor—an ocean.

Earth

Salmon puzzle: Why did males turn female?

Most of the spawning female Chinook salmon in one part of the Columbia River appear to have started life as males.

Health & Medicine

Drugs counteract irritable bowel syndrome

Antibiotics can knock out bacteria overload in the small intestine, temporarily reversing irritable bowel syndrome.

Animals

Birds may inherit their taste for the town

Tests switching cliff swallow nestlings to colonies of different sizes suggest the birds inherit their preference for group size.

Math

Proof clarifies a map-folding problem

Researchers have developed an efficient algorithm to determine, given a collection of creases on a piece of paper, whether a sequence of simple folds produces a flat result, like a folded road map.

Chemistry

Researchers stretch for improved surfaces

A surprisingly simple, new technique could create better coatings for everything from medical implants to ship hulls.

Tech

Ink-jet dots form transistor spots

A new technique makes ink-jet printing of transistor circuits possible from conductive polymer inks.