News
- Tech
Tractor beam
Magnetic nanoparticles selectively bind to specific bacteria and can drag them out of a liquid.
- Humans
Strategies to improve teaching
Incorporating emerging data on how kids learn and cement ideas could help schools teach science more effectively, a new report argues.
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Putting tumors on pause
Keeping benign breast tumors from progressing into a malignant cancer can be achieved in mice by reducing a signaling protein.
- Health & Medicine
Diabetes drug shows new potential
Exendin-4 (exenatide) might complement a drug called anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody in reversing type 1 diabetes, a study in mice shows.
By Nathan Seppa - Humans
Divorce is not ecofriendly
Divorce often takes a devastating toll on families, but it has significant impacts on the environment as well.
By Sid Perkins - Health & Medicine
Malaria’s new guises
Scientists have observed Plasmodium falciparum enjoying three distinct lifestyles—two of which have never been seen before—in the blood of infected children.
By Brian Vastag - Earth
Folding with a little help from friends
By slowly unraveling a protein, scientists have shown how other proteins called chaperones influence protein folding.
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Base Load: Currents add detail to DNA structure
The first precise measurements of DNA's sideways conductivity confirm its similarities with semiconductors.
- Earth
Falling Behind: North American terrain absorbs carbon dioxide too slowly
North America's vegetation soaks up millions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year, an impressive rate of sequestration that still can't keep up with the prodigious emissions of the planet-warming gas generated by human activity on the continent.
By Sid Perkins - Health & Medicine
Calculated Risk: Shedding light on fracture hazards in elderly
Diminished bone density in elderly people contributes to fractures following traumatic accidents.
By Nathan Seppa - Plants
So Sproutish: Anti-aging gene for plants gives drought protection
A gene that can hold off the decrepitude of old age in plants offers an unusual approach to protecting crops from drought.
By Susan Milius - Anthropology
Northwest Passage: Americas populated via Alaska, genetics show
A single population of prehistoric Siberians crossed the Bering Strait into Alaska and fanned out to North and South America, a new genetic analysis of living Native Americans suggests.
By Brian Vastag