News
- Tech
Hydrogen hopes in carbon shells
Lithium atoms added to buckyball surfaces bestow on these molecules a remarkable capacity to store hydrogen.
- Earth
Air conditioning could heat the world
Global warming predicted for the coming decades may decrease winter heating bills in some parts of the United States, but producing the extra electricity needed for summertime air conditioning will create increased emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide.
- Physics
On-chip lamp scores a bull’s-eye
Etching nanoscale, concentric ridges around a lamp-on-a-chip known as a light-emitting diode, or LED, brightens the device's glow seven-fold.
- Earth
Rogue alga routed
An invasive-species action team has eradicated one of the world's worst weeds, a marine alga, from a California lagoon, its only known foothold in North America.
- Ecosystems
Fish as Farmers: Reef residents tend an algal crop
A damselfish cultivates underwater gardens of an algal species that researchers haven't found growing on its own.
- Health & Medicine
Total Recall: Drug shows long-lasting boosts of memory in rats
Research in rats shows that an experimental drug completely regenerates parts of the brain crucial to forming memories.
- Health & Medicine
Need for Speed: Faster-acting tuberculosis drugs now in testing would limit deaths
Drugs that take only 2 months to cure tuberculosis instead of the usual 6 months could prevent millions of TB infections and deaths.
- Astronomy
Solar System Small Fry: Stellar blinks reveal tiny bodies near Pluto
By measuring tiny dips in the intensity of X rays from a distant star, astronomers say they have detected more than 50 of the tiniest chunks of ice ever found in the outer solar system.
- Paleontology
New View: Method looks inside embryo fossils
Using an X-ray–scanning technique, scientists have taken a high-resolution peek inside fossilized embryos of some early multicellular organisms.
- Earth
Macho Moms: Perchlorate pollutant masculinizes fish
Perchlorate, a compound best known as a component of rocket fuel, can disrupt sexual development in fish.
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Bad Vibrations? Ultrasound disturbs mouse brains
Prolonged and frequent use of fetal ultrasound might lead to abnormal fetal brain development, a study in mice suggests.
- Tech
Glare gives silicon goose bumps
New experiments show that fluorescent lights cause undesirable bumpiness on the surface of silicon, identifying what may be a previously unrecognized cause of flaws in microchips that could become increasingly important.
