News
- Planetary Science
Moon’s origins revealed in rocks’ chemistry
A new chemical measurement of rocks from Earth and from the moon supports the giant impact hypothesis, which explains how the moon formed billions of years ago.
- Genetics
Bromine found to be essential to animal life
Fruit flies deprived of the element bromine can’t make normal connective tissue that supports cells and either don’t hatch or die as larvae.
- Life
Hatcheries’ metal can disrupt steelhead magnetic sense
Growing up in magnetic fields distorted by pipes and electronics confounds young fish’s inherited map sense.
- Health & Medicine
Early malnutrition may impair infants’ mix of gut microbes
Babies’ gut microbiomes fail to fully recover even after fending off bouts with malnutrition.
- Astronomy
Rocky, overweight planet shakes up theories
Kepler-10c is a rocky exoplanet 17 times as massive as Earth, and astronomers are puzzled as to how it formed.
- Health & Medicine
Health risks of e-cigarettes emerge
Research uncovers a growing list of chemicals that end up in an e-cigarette user’s lungs, and one study finds that an e-cigarette’s vapors can increase the virulence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
- Chemistry
Bacteria take plants to biofuel in one step
Engineered bacterium singlehandedly dismantles tough switchgrass molecules, making sugars that it ferments to make ethanol.
- Psychology
Stereotypes might make ‘female’ hurricanes deadlier
Precautions may get shelved by those in the path of severe storms with feminine names, leading some to suggest that storms should be named after animals.
- Health & Medicine
Brain’s support cells play role in hunger
Once considered just helpers for neurons, astrocytes sense the hormone leptin and can change mice’s appetites.
- Life
Drug candidate takes new aim at MERS
An experimental drug that shuts down construction of virus-making factories could become a new weapon against MERS.
- Tech
Lasers heal damaged rodent teeth
Handheld laser spurs stem cells into action, regrowing dentin in drilled teeth.
- Archaeology
First pants worn by horse riders 3,000 years ago
A new study indicates horse-riding Asians wove and wore wool trousers by around 3,000 years ago.
