News
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Oceans reveal secrets of viruses
Scientists have completed the first survey of virus DNA in oceans around the world.
- Tech
Safety practices surveyed
Nanotechnology companies and laboratories largely rely on the same safety practices that they use when working with conventional chemicals, an international survey reports.
- Earth
Balancing Act: El Niños and dust both affect coral bleaching
Most of the annual variation in the extent of coral bleaching in the Caribbean is driven by two factors: the amount of dust and other particles suspended in the atmosphere, and the climate phenomenon known as El Niño.
- Health & Medicine
Ticking toward Trouble: Long-term rise in heart rate portends death
Men whose hearts beat faster over time are likely to die earlier than those whose hearts keep an unchanging cadence year after year, according to a 20-year study.
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Age Becomes Her: Male chimpanzees favor old females as mates
Male chimpanzees in Uganda prefer to mate with older females, a possible sign of males' need to identify successful mothers in a promiscuous mating system.
- Physics
Super Silicon: Top semiconductor turns into a superconductor
A heavy dose of boron transforms silicon, the superhero material of electronics, into a superconductor.
- Health & Medicine
Kidney Progress: Drug slows cyst growth
The trial drug roscovitine has been shown to reverse polycystic kidney disease in mice.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Pops: Nearby galaxy is hotbed of supernova formation
Large galaxies usually have no more than three supernovas blow up in a century, but the nearby galaxy NGC 1316 has had two such explosions within the past 5 months and four in the past 26 years.
- Animals
Fighting Styles: Gene gives flies his, her conflict moves
Switching forms of one gene can make a male fruit fly fight like a girl, and vice versa.
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Toxin Buster: New technique makes cottonseeds edible
Scientists have engineered cotton plants that produce seeds missing a toxic compound that had previously made them inedible.
- Tech
Ancients made nanotech hair dye
A hair-darkening paste invented thousands of years ago forms lead-and-sulfur nanocrystals remarkably similar to those made in today's nanotechnology labs.
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Low body heat lengthens mouse lives
Mice genetically engineered to have slightly lower-than-normal body temperatures lived significantly longer than mice with normal body temperatures.
