News
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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.
By Susan Milius -
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.
By Nathan Seppa - Health & Medicine
Protecting against a difficult microbe
By using DNA from the bacterium Clostridium difficile, scientists have fashioned a vaccine against the microbe.
By Nathan Seppa - 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.
By Nathan Seppa - Health & Medicine
Dengue strikes United States
Texas has been hit with the first-ever outbreak of dengue hemorrhagic fever in the continental United States.
By Nathan Seppa - 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.
By Susan Milius - 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.
By Peter Weiss -
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.
By Ron Cowen - 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.
By Nathan Seppa - Astronomy
Assault on Andromeda: Nearby galaxy had recent collision
New findings suggest that a small galaxy recently plunged into Andromeda, opening a new window on collisions that are rare today but were common in the early universe.
By Ron Cowen - Physics
Vanishing Actor: Physicists unveil first invisibility cloak
The first functional invisibility cloak, which operates at microwave frequencies, has emerged from the laboratory.
By Peter Weiss