News
- Health & Medicine
Sticky when wet
An improved way to make the sticky protein that mussels use to cling to underwater rocks could lead to better cardiac stents.
- Space
A special place
Two proposed studies might determine whether dark energy is real or humans live in a special place in the cosmos
By Ron Cowen -
Lost and found
Former child soldiers in Africa often adjust well to community life if they receive group rehabilitation and community acceptance, studies indicate
By Bruce Bower - Life
Duckbill decoded
With a mix of reptilian, bird and mammalian features, the duck-billed platypus genome looks as strange as the animal.
By Amy Maxmen - Humans
Slowpoke settlers
Evidence suggests New World settlers slowly moved down the Pacific Coast and inhabited southern Chile by 14,000 years ago.
By Bruce Bower - Health & Medicine
Smart microbes
Bacteria are smarter than you might think. Single-celled microbes can learn to predict changes in their environments and prepare themselves.
- Climate
A little drier every day
The Sahara, one of the hottest and driest regions on Earth, gradually became arid over a period of centuries, a finding that contradicts many previous studies.
By Sid Perkins -
- Space
A new look at the gamma-ray sky
Explosions pouring out as much energy in seconds as the sun does in its entire lifetime. Invisible beams of radiation sweeping across the sky like giant searchlights. Supermassive black holes emitting powerful and highly variable jets of radiation. GAMMA GLOW Simulation of the high-energy sky that will be seen by GLAST. Sonoma State, NASA The […]
By Ron Cowen - Health & Medicine
Glucose galore
Pregnant women with elevated blood sugar are more likely to have oversized babies, posing a risk to mother and newborn.
By Nathan Seppa - Math
Less is more
Researchers have shown that a grip that’s too tight can be counterproductive, especially on a microscopic object — but the findings could apply to fields ranging from ecology to sociology.
- Space
Flooring the cosmic accelerator
If cosmologist Will Percival of the University of Portsmouth in England is right, the universe will end about 60 billion years from now, when every molecule and atom will be torn asunder by a mysterious entity that opposes gravity’s pull and turns it into a cosmic push.
By Ron Cowen