News

Materials Science

Soybeans could beef up plywood glues

Researchers have replaced animal protein with soybean protein in experimental plywood glue, potentially reducing cost and health worries.

Astronomy

Astronomers find two planetary systems

Each of the newly discovered systems features a star roughly similar to the sun and a bizarre entourage of planets and possibly a failed star that may provide fresh insight into planet formation.

Health & Medicine

Do Meat and Dairy Harm Aging Bones?

Two studies have contradictory findings about the impacts of animal protein on bones in elderly people.

Earth

Lake sediment tells of Maya droughts

Sediment cores taken last year from the bottom of a lake on Mexico's Yucatán peninsula indicate that a series of extended droughts coincided with major cultural upheavals among the Mayan inhabitants of the area.

Earth

Sediments show bipolar melting cycle

Both the North and South Poles have experienced regular and simultaneous periods of significant melting during the past 3 million years, according to sediments from the ocean floor at high latitudes.

Earth

Snowpack chemistry can deplete ozone

Pollutants trapped in Arctic snow can be reactivated by sunlight when the sun returns to high latitudes in the spring, leading to ozone depletion in the snowpack and at low altitudes.

Earth

Pollution in India may affect climate

Computer models show that air pollution over India could be preventing up to 15 percent of the sunlight from reaching the ground in the springtime, possibly causing temperature drops of up to 2 degrees Celsius.

Earth

Y2K: One of the hottest, wettest yet

Preliminary data from the National Climatic Data Center indicate the year 2000 will be one of the six hottest and one of the ten wettest years on record.

Tech

Current may flow free and cheap

Wires that carry electricity without resistance at relatively high temperatures--and are inexpensive--moved a large step closer to reality as a 100-fold speed-up in depositing a key material wiped out a major obstacle to making those wires.

Tech

From silicon seeds, laser might sprout

The achievement of light amplification in a layer of tiny nuggets of silicon called quantum dots raises the possibility that long-desired silicon lasers are on the way.