News
- Physics
Scanner Darkly: Tiny venetian blinds enhance radiography
Microscopic gratings that select scattered X rays might improve luggage screening and cancer detection.
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Do-It-Yourself DNA: Scientists assemble first synthetic genome
Assembly of the first human-made microbial genome could pave the way for making microbes with synthetic DNA.
- Ecosystems
Big Foot: Eco-footprints of rich dwarf poor nations’ debt
The first global accounting finds rich and middle-income nations stomping heavy footprints on poorer ones.
- Astronomy
Four’s a crowd
Astronomers have found a quartet of stars packed into a region smaller than Jupiter's orbit around the sun.
- Astronomy
Gravity at play: A double lens
Astronomers have discovered an extraordinarily rare double cosmic mirage.
- Astronomy
Case of the misshapen disk
A deformed disk around a young star may have gotten its swept-back appearance as the result of a collision with a dense gas cloud.
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9/11 attacks stoked U.S. heart ailments
People who experienced serious stress reactions shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks also displayed markedly elevated rates of new heart and blood vessel ailments over the next 3 years.
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Antidepressants get overly positive spin
Studies finding beneficial effects of antidepressant drugs for depressed patients get published far more often than do studies that uncover no antidepressant benefits.
- Paleontology
Life explodes twice
The Ediacaran fauna were as varied as all animals in existence today and, more impressively, as in the Cambrian, report paleontologists.
- Animals
Fenced-off trees drop their friends
Protecting acacia trees from large, tree-munching animals sets off a chain of events that ends up ruining the trees' partnership with their bodyguard ants.
- Astronomy
X-raying a galactic jet set
The deepest X-ray portrait ever taken of the galaxy Centaurus A highlights its jets and activity around its supermassive black hole.
- Anthropology
Infectious Voyagers: DNA suggests Columbus took syphilis to Europe
A genetic analysis of syphilis and related bacterial strains from different parts of the world fits the theory that Christopher Columbus and his crew brought syphilis from the Americas to Renaissance Europe, where it evolved into modern strains of the sexually transmitted disease.
