News

  1. Tech

    Roughing up counterfeiters

    A new anticounterfeiting scheme generates unique, reproducible identity codes that could be used to authenticate passports, credit cards, and other items on the basis of inherent, microscopic irregularities in the items' surfaces.

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  2. Astronomy

    Big sky

    The biggest survey of the heavens just got bigger when the Sloan Digital Sky Survey received a 3-year extension.

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  3. A Slumber Not So Sweet: Loss of brain cells that regulate breathing may cause death during sleep

    Elderly people may die in their sleep because they gradually lose brain cells that control breathing.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    New Carrier: Common tick implicated in spread of fever

    The brown dog tick is capable of spreading the bacterium that causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

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  5. Astronomy

    Three’s Company: Asteroid 87 Sylvia and her two moons

    Astronomers have for the first time discovered an asteroid with two moons, an indication that the rock is highly porous.

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  6. Tech

    Electronic Leap: Plastic component may lead to ubiquitous radio tags

    Tiny radio circuits cheap enough to be embedded into countless products have moved closer to reality with the development of a fast, plastic semiconductor diode.

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  7. Animals

    Out of the Jungle: New lemurs found in Madagascar’s forests

    Two new species of lemur have been discovered in Madagascar, the only home of these tiny and endangered primates.

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  8. Earth

    Methane Maker: Method gets to root of gas from rice paddies

    Scientists have singled out microorganisms that appear to be largely responsible for natural emissions of the greenhouse gas methane from rice paddies.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Sun Struck: Data suggest skin cancer epidemic looms

    The incidence of non-melanoma skin cancers in young adults is mushrooming, possibly heralding an epidemic in follow-up cancers during the coming decades.

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  10. Earth

    Study finds low battlefield hazard in depleted uranium

    A calculation of the health impacts from the use of depleted uranium in antitank munitions projects small increases in the risk of lung cancer and colon cancer, but only for the most heavily exposed individuals.

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  11. Materials Science

    Nanotube carpet mimics gecko feet

    Carbon nanotubes can outdo the extraordinary sticking power of a gecko's foot hairs.

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  12. Physics

    Materials scientists go flat out

    By separating flakes of single-layer crystals from several ordinary materials, physicists have discovered what may be both the world's thinnest materials and a technologically promising new class of substances.

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