News
- Earth
Switchgrass may yield biofuel bounty
Making ethanol from switchgrass yielded more than 5 times more energy than needed to grow the crops in a large-scale farming trial.
- Health & Medicine
Sleep disruption and glucose processing
Shallow sleep can depress the body's ability to process glucose efficiently.
- Animals
Butterfly’s clock linked to compass
The most detailed look yet at the monarch butterfly's daily rhythm keeper suggests it's closer to ancient forms than to the fruit fly's or mouse's inner clock.
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- Health & Medicine
Night lights may foster cancer
Regularly working through the night appears to come at a steep cost—a heightened risk of cancer.
- Humans
Transport emissions sizable, and rising
Almost one-sixth of the carbon dioxide produced by human activity since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution resulted from the transport of goods and people—an emissions fraction that's increasing by the year.
- Physics
Bathtub Optics: Bending light also shifts it sideways
When light bends at an interface, it also shifts depending on its polarization. With animation.
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Positive Signal: Lone protons carry messages between cells
In roundworms, protons carry signals from cells in the intestine to muscle cells, raising the possibility that protons might act as neurotransmitters in mammal brains.
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Seeing Again: Blind fish parents have fry that see
Cross two strains of blind cavefish that have lived in the dark for a million years, and some of their offspring will be able to see.
- Astronomy
Heavy Find: Weighty neutron stars may rule out exotic core
Neutron stars may be the weirdest stars in the universe, but they don't seem to be very strange, a weighty new report finds.
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Mind Control: Hypnosis offers amnesia clues
Results of a new study using hypnosis may shed light on the process of memory retrieval and the potential for one part of the brain to block it.
- Earth
Hued Afterglow: Fingerprinting diamonds via phosphorescence
The eerie phosphorescence displayed by a rare form of blue diamond can be used as an easy, cheap, and nondestructive way to identify individual gemstones and to distinguish natural blue diamonds from synthetic ones.
