News
-
Internet Seduction: Online sex offenders prey on at-risk teens
Most online sex crimes involve adults seducing psychologically vulnerable teenagers into sexual relationships, a finding at odds with public fears of Internet-using children falling prey to deceptive, violent sexual predators.
- Earth
Defining Toxic: Federal agencies look to cells, not animals, for chemical testing
Government scientists are collaborating to shift the testing of potentially toxic chemicals away from animals to methods that use high-speed automated robots, which should generate data relevant to humans faster and more cheaply than current methods.
-
On Top of Words: Spatial language spurs kids’ reasoning skills
Recent studies of spatial reasoning in deaf children support the notion that language helps people encode certain concepts and suggest that using spatial language with children may boost overall reasoning skills.
- Health & Medicine
Eye Protection: Antibiotic knocks back blinding disease
Twice-a-year administration of the antibiotic azithromycin to Ethiopian villagers greatly reduces cases of trachoma, a blinding eye disease.
- Astronomy
Stellar Switch: Sun not alone in making magnetic flip-flops
After years of searching, researchers have for the first time documented that a star other than the sun flips its magnetic poles.
- Earth
Going Down: Climate change, water use threaten Lake Mead
If climate changes as expected and future water use is not curtailed, there's a 50 percent chance that Arizona's Lake Mead, one of the southwestern United States' key reservoirs, will become functionally dry in the next couple of decades.
- Health & Medicine
Benign—Not: Unexpected deaths in probiotics study
Acute pancreatitis patients provided nutrition laced with supposedly beneficial gut microbes died at far higher rates than did patients who received just the nutrients.
- Animals
People bring both risk and reward to chimps
Tolerating human researchers and ecotourists brought a group of chimpanzees a higher risk of catching human diseases but a lower chance of attacks from poachers.
- Earth
Spying asbestos
A quick, on-site test will allow contractors and inspectors to test for asbestos in construction materials such as concrete.
- Astronomy
Organic ring around nearby star
Researchers have found the first evidence that a dust ring around another star, the likely vestige of recent planet formation, contains complex organic molecules that could be the building blocks of life.
- Paleontology
From China, the tiniest pterodactyl
Researchers excavating the fossil-rich rocks of northeastern China have discovered yet another paleontological marvel: a flying reptile the size of a sparrow.
-
It takes a village of proteins
Scientists learn how nerve cells sprout new connections by looking at thousands of distinct proteins simultaneously.
