News
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Health & MedicineIt’s that time. . .for heart attacks?
A small study of young women already at high risk of having a heart attack suggests that heart attacks are most frequent when estrogen levels are low, soon after a woman's period begins.
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Health & MedicineBig meals boost heart attack risk
Unusually heavy meals boost a person's chance of developing a heart attack, at least among those people who already have risk factors for heart disease.
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Health & MedicineTeasing out tea’s heart-healthy effect
Drinking black tea makes a person's blood vessels dilate more easily, which may explain why drinking tea can protect against heart disease.
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Health & MedicineNitric oxide may benefit damaged hearts
A small study in mice suggests that inhaling nitric oxide may protect against tissue damage after a heart attack.
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Health & MedicineSputum Test May Predict Lung Cancer
By zeroing in on aberrations in two cancer-fighting genes, researchers have found a marker for cancer risk that could help doctors screen people for signs of lung cancer early enough for treatment to be effective.
By Nathan Seppa -
Materials ScienceTo make bronze, tin flakes do a wild dance
Upsetting some prevailing ideas about how alloys form, rafts of tin atoms jitterbug madly around on a pure copper surface and leave spots of bronze in their wakes.
By Peter Weiss -
Low-cal diet may reduce cancer in monkeys
Researchers monitoring monkeys have seen signs that slashing normal calorie consumption can benefit long-lived primates by extending natural life spans and reducing the odds of suffering diseases such as cancer.
By John Travis -
AnimalsReally big guys restrain youth violence
Importing six full-grown bull elephants into a park of youngsters stopped killing sprees by young males.
By Susan Milius -
TechNovel sensing system catches the dud spud
A new device can detect a single potato that's infected with bacterial soft rot while buried deep in a storage crate with hundreds of healthy tubers.
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AstronomyOld stars shed light on young Milky Way
Analyzing the composition of 70 of the oldest stars in the galaxy—the largest such sample so far—scientists have found new evidence that a generation of short-lived stars that died explosively must have preceded this elderly population and that the oldest part of the Milky Way originated not as a single component, but as bits and pieces that may have taken several hundred million years to form and coalesce.
By Ron Cowen -
AnimalsTime to revise right whales’ family tree?
A statistical analysis of DNA from nearly 400 right whales around the world suggests there may be three species of Eubalena, not just two—a conclusion that may boost conservation efforts.
By Laura Sivitz -
PaleontologyFossil find extends ants’ ancient lineage
The recently described, 92-million-year-old fossil of a primitive worker ant pushes back the first record of its particular subfamily by 40 million years, forcing researchers to reevaluate their ideas about the early evolution of these insects.
By Sid Perkins