News
- Agriculture
Feds pull approval of poultry antibiotic
The FDA has announced its intent to ban an antibiotic used by poultry farmers because of concerns that continued use of the drug could make it harder to successfully treat food poisoning in people with products from the same class of antibiotics.
- Earth
Infants pick up toxic chemicals in intensive care
Newborns in intensive care units absorb high concentrations of a potentially toxic phthalate from the plastic tubing and other equipment used in treating them.
- Health & Medicine
After terror, moms’ stress affects kids
Infants born to women who developed posttraumatic stress disorder during pregnancy have unusually low concentrations of the hormone cortisol.
- Astronomy
Cosmic soot
Astronomers have found a group of complex organic compounds, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, from a time when the universe was less than one-third its current age.
- Humans
Space Woes: NASA programs reel from shuttle problems
Technological problems for NASA's space shuttle Discovery, such as falling foam and dangling insulation, are causing safety worries and throwing a crimp into the U.S. space program.
- Tech
Speed Reader: Gene sequencing gets a boost
The first lab-ready technology to challenge the dominant gene-sequencing technique known as the Sanger method taps miniaturization and parallel reading of hundreds of thousands of DNA stretches to boost speed and slash cost.
- Health & Medicine
Virus Attack on Cancer: Heat makes neglected technology work better
Adding heat sensitizes tumor cells to the effects of a genetically modified virus, which then can kill them.
- Earth
Multifaceted Mineral: Intense heat, pressure bear new form of silica
By squeezing a mineral sample to pressures higher than those deep within Earth, then zapping it with a laser, scientists have created a crystalline form of silicon dioxide previously unknown on Earth.
- Health & Medicine
From Famine, Schizophrenia: Starvation gives birth to personality disorder
Women who go severely hungry during early pregnancy face twice the normal risk of having a child who develops schizophrenia in adulthood.
- Planetary Science
Bigger than Pluto: Tenth planet or icy leftover?
Astronomers have found a body larger and more distant than Pluto, the biggest object found in the solar system since Neptune and its moon Triton were discovered in 1846.
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Double Dog: Researchers produce first cloned canine
The dogged pursuit of a South Korean research team has produced Snuppy, the world's first cloned canine.
- Earth
Life thrived below solid ice shelf
A survey of a segment of Antarctic seafloor that until recently had laid beneath a thick, floating ice shelf for thousands of years has revealed an ecosystem apparently based on chemical nourishment, not sunshine.
