News
- Paleontology
Mastodons in Musth: Tusks may chronicle battles between males
Damage in the fossil tusks of male mastodons suggests that the creatures engaged in fierce combat with rival males at a certain time of year each year of their adult lives.
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Med-Start Kids: Pros, cons of Ritalin for preschool ADHD
A long-term study indicates that 3- to 5-year-olds with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder who are prescribed the stimulant Ritalin often show behavioral improvements but also display greater sensitivity to the drug's side effects than older children do.
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Genome Buzz: Honeybee DNA raises social questions
Scientists have officially unveiled the DNA code of the western honeybee, the first genome to be sequenced for an animal with ultrastratified societies.
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Gene might underlie travelers’ diarrhea
Travelers to Mexico who get diarrhea are more likely than healthy travelers to have a particular variant form of the gene for the glycoprotein lactoferrin.
- Health & Medicine
Protecting against a difficult microbe
By using DNA from the bacterium Clostridium difficile, scientists have fashioned a vaccine against the microbe.
- Health & Medicine
Flu vaccine seems to work for kids under 6 months of age
Babies younger than 6 months appear fully capable of responding to a flu shot.
- Health & Medicine
Dengue strikes United States
Texas has been hit with the first-ever outbreak of dengue hemorrhagic fever in the continental United States.
- Animals
Ivory-billed hopes flit to Florida
There's no photo, but a team of ornithologists says that its sightings suggest that a few ivory-billed woodpeckers still live along the Choctawhatchee River in Florida.
- Physics
Electromagnetism could ease the flow in oil pipelines
A few minutes of exposure to a magnetic or electric field sharply reduces crude oil's viscosity for hours at a time.
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Itsy bitsy genome
Researchers have sequenced the smallest genome yet discovered, a string of DNA belonging to a species of bacterium that lives inside sap-eating insects' guts.
- Astronomy
Feeling the heat of an extrasolar planet
Astronomers have measured the temperature variation between the lit and unlit sides of a planet outside the solar system.
- Health & Medicine
Prep Work: Bird-flu vaccine might work better with primer
Giving people a vaccine against an existing form of avian influenza might help them respond better when given a shot for a future strain of the virus during a pandemic.
