News
- Physics
15 = 3 × 5: Photons do their first quantum math
Physicists have performed the first calculation involving manipulation of the quantum states of photons, another step on the road to optical quantum computers.
- Earth
The Salt Flat That Isn’t Flat: World’s largest playa sports ridges, valleys
An innovative field survey of the world's largest salt flat, a New Jersey–size playa high in the Andes, reveals that the barren expanse actually has minuscule, centimeter-scale variations in topography.
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Chimp Champ: Ape aces memory test, outscores people
A young chimp outperforms college students on a test of recalling numbers glimpsed for less than a quarter of a second. With video.
- Health & Medicine
Sickle Save: Skin cells fix anemia in mice
Using a new technique to turn skin cells into stem cells, scientists have corrected sickle cell anemia in mice.
- Plants
Botanists refine family tree for flowering plants
Two research teams have used the biggest array of flowering-plant genes yet to try to reconstruct the elusive evolutionary history of today's flowers.
- Physics
Sharper than expected
A new technique beats the resolution limits of ordinary microscopes in a way that seems to defy conventional optical theory.
- 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.
- 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.
- Humans
Divorce is not ecofriendly
Divorce often takes a devastating toll on families, but it has significant impacts on the environment as well.
- 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.
