News
- Earth
Corn, a new sensor of carbon dioxide
Scientists have developed a way to use corn plants to monitor and map human-generated emissions of carbon dioxide.
- Tech
Wrinkle, wrinkle, little polymer
Scientists have developed a cheap and easy way to create specific patterns of tiny wrinkles on the surface of a flexible and commonly used polymer, a technique that could be used to fabricate an assortment of microdevices.
- Planetary Science
Solar craft get into position
With the assist of gravitational boosts from the moon, twin spacecraft have completed a series of maneuvers that will enable them to take three-dimensional images of the sun.
- Humans
Top Prospects for Tomorrow’s Labs: National competition yields a dream team of young scientific talent
Twenty young women and 20 young men aced an early challenge in their scientific careers by becoming finalists in the annual Intel Science Talent Search.
- Physics
Waves from the Big Bang: Upcoming detectors may view newborn universe
Ripples in space-time may soon give scientists a glimpse of the universe as it looked a tiny fraction of a second after its birth.
- Animals
Bite This: Borrowed toad toxins save snake’s neck
An Asian snake gets toxins by salvaging them from the poisonous toads it eats.
- Health & Medicine
Early Fix: Prion disease remedied in mice
Diseases caused by misfolded proteins called prions can be reversed if caught early enough, experiments in mice suggest.
- Astronomy
Kaput: Hubble’s main camera stops working
The sharpest, most sensitive camera on the aging Hubble Space Telescope has stopped working.
- Earth
Disaster’s Consequences: Hurricane’s legacy includes arsenic
Construction debris strewn across the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina contains a disturbing amount of arsenic that could contaminate groundwater if not properly managed.
- Archaeology
Suburb of Stonehenge: Ritual village found near famed rock site
Excavations at a 4,600-year-old village in southern England indicate that it was occupied by the builders of nearby Stonehenge and hosted feasts where people assembled before transporting the dead to the huge circle of stones, which served as an ancestor memorial.
- Earth
Gas tanks could guzzle half of U.S. corn yields
Strong expansion of the U.S. corn-to-ethanol industry, now under way, stands poised to divert much of the grain from food uses to transportation fuel.
-
Plastics ingredient disrupts fetal-egg development
A common estrogen-mimicking chemical can damage eggs while an animal is still in the womb.
