News

Tech

Pile-o’-polymers breaks up on command

Stacks of polymers designed to break apart in acid solution or at a certain voltage may prove useful for releasing drugs, pesticides, or other compounds where and when needed.

Health & Medicine

Colonoscopy screening would avert cancer

Increased use of colonoscopy could significantly reduce the number of colon cancer deaths and wouldn't cost much more overall than other tests.

Health & Medicine

Mutation linked to sinus infections

People who have frequent sinus infections are more likely on average to carry one copy of the same genetic mutation that causes cystic fibrosis, even though they don't have that disease.

Paleontology

Did ancient wildfire end in barbecue?

Small pieces of large bones and petrified wood that show distinct signs of being burned may be evidence of a 74-million-year-old wildfire in central Wyoming.

Paleontology

The last ice age wasn’t totally icy

Radiocarbon dating of fossils taken from caves on islands along Alaska's southeastern coast suggest that at least a portion of the area remained ice-free during the last ice age.

Paleontology

Allosaurus as a Jurassic headbanger

The skull of the carnivorous dinosaur Allosaurus fragilis can resist levels of stress much higher than those expected from chewing, which may provide insight into the animal's method of attacking its prey.

Paleontology

Calling all orthodontists. . .

Researchers have unearthed fossils of a theropod dinosaur whose front teeth grew almost directly forward, which sets it apart from all other related species.

Animals

Shielded cells help fish ignore noise

Fish can sort out the interesting ripples from the background rush of water currents through sensors shielded in canals that run along their flanks.

Paleontology

Early Biped Fossil Pops Up in Europe

A newly described, nearly complete 290-million-year-old fossil of an ancient reptile pushes back the evidence for terrestrial bipedalism by 60 million years.

Astronomy

Rendezvous gets more personal with Eros

Venturing closer to a space rock than any satellite has ever gone before, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR)-Shoemaker mission last week took the sharpest images ever recorded of an asteroid.

Health & Medicine

Prostate enzyme triggers cancer drug

A new drug reverses advanced prostate cancer in mice by enlisting the aid of prostate-specific antigen, an enzyme found in most prostate tumors.

Health & Medicine

Killing immune cells thwarts arthritis

Researchers have successfully treated people with rheumatoid arthritis by temporarily wiping out most of their antibody-producing immune cells.