News
- Health & Medicine
Pill boosts cancer risk in some women
Women who took oral contraceptives before 1975, and whose mother or sister had breast cancer between 1944 and 1952, have triple the likelihood of getting breast cancer as compared with similar women who didn't take the pill.
- Health & Medicine
Gene helps alcohol help the heart
A genetic study indicates that moderate consumption of alcohol helps keep the heart healthy.
- Health & Medicine
Fetal cells pop up in mom’s thyroid
A woman's thyroid gland contains male cells, suggesting that cells from her son passed into her when he was a fetus.
- Paleontology
Listening to fish for extinction clues
Tiny fossils from fish that survived worldwide extinctions about 34 million years ago may reveal that cooler winters caused the die-off.
- Earth
A slump or a slide? Density decides
Using a full-scale simulator, researchers showed that just a small difference in soil density determines whether a landslide becomes a fast-moving killer or merely one that slowly slumps downhill.
- Materials Science
Scientists tone down silicon rockers
Researchers have created pairs of silicon atoms that stay level instead of slowly rocking in place, permitting scientists to study silicon-surface reactions in unprecedented detail.
- Materials Science
High-temperature ceramics takes flight
A recent NASA flight test of ultrahigh-temperature ceramic materials might lead to a new aerospace design that would make the space shuttle look downright old-fashioned.
- Health & Medicine
AIDS Vaccine Tests Well in Monkeys
An experimental AIDS vaccine bolstered with two immune proteins protects rhesus monkeys from the disease even when they are exposed to a combination of simian and human immunodeficiency virus.
- Earth
Flaws make it a geologist’s best friend
By analyzing some of a diamond's trapped impurities, researchers were able to measure remnants of the gargantuan pressure that produced the gem.
- Archaeology
Stone Age statuettes don disputed apparel
A report describing woven caps, skirts, belts, and other apparel on Venus figurines from the Stone Age draws some critical responses.
- Physics
Protons may waltz off nuclear dance floor
Detection of proton pairs simultaneously emitted from neon nuclei raises the possibility that a new and long-sought window into the nucleus has been found and unlocked.
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Model explains bubonic plague’s persistence
A computer model of bubonic plague suggests rats can harbor the disease for years before a human epidemic breaks out.
