News
- Earth
Cold and Deep: Antarctica’s Lake Vostok has two big neighbors
Trapped beneath Antarctica's kilometers-thick ice sheet are two immense bodies of water that may harbor ecosystems that have been isolated for millions of years.
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Good for Something: Prion protein maintains stem cells
The same protein that, in an altered shape, causes mad cow disease maintains the body's cache of blood-producing stem cells.
- Physics
Smashing Success: Accelerator gets cool upgrade
A novel scheme for increasing the number of collisions in particle accelerators has boosted the performance of the world's highest-energy collider.
- Health & Medicine
Self Help: Stem cells rescue lupus patients
By rebuilding a patient's immune system using his or her own stem cells, doctors can reverse of the course of lupus in severely ill patients.
- Animals
Poor Devils: Critters’ fights transmit cancer
Tasmanian devils transmit cancer cells when they bite each other during routine squabbles, producing lesions that are often fatal.
- Astronomy
Galactic cannibalism
A highly elongated group of stars is most likely a dwarf galaxy that is being gobbled up by the Milky Way.
- Earth
2005 was warmest year on record
Last year's global average temperature was the warmest since scientists began compiling records in the late 1800s.
- Earth
Manganese can make water toxic
Drinking water contaminated with manganese can subtly limit a child's intellectual development.
- Health & Medicine
Rotavirus vaccines pass big safety tests
The largest industry-funded medical trials in history have found that two new vaccines are both safe and effective against life-threatening childhood diarrhea caused by rotavirus.
- Health & Medicine
Tumor’s border cells told to leave
Cells on a tumor's outer layer that touch healthy tissue receive a chemical signal that sends them wandering away.
- Earth
Warming climate will slow ocean circulation
Later this century, rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere could slow the ocean currents that bring warm waters to the North Atlantic.
- Animals
New candidates for smallest vertebrate
Two recent scientific papers have described fish species that could, depending on the definition, be the world's smallest known vertebrate.
