News
- Earth
Hurricanes get boost from ocean spray
A new model that describes airflow across the ocean's surface suggests that tiny droplets whipped from the tops of waves increase wind speeds well above what they'd be if the ocean spray wasn't there.
- Health & Medicine
King George III should have sued
The madness of England's King George III may have been partly due to arsenic poisoning.
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Bacteria feed on stinky breath
Scientists have isolated mouth bacteria that consume the chemicals that cause bad breath.
- Health & Medicine
Lyme microbe forms convenient bond with tick protein
The bacterium that causes Lyme disease commandeers a gene in the deer tick, inducing overproduction of a salivary protein that the bacterium uses to escape immune detection once it's inside a mammal.
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Human immune signal sets off bacterial attack
A chemical secreted by immune cells when people are stressed or sick causes a common gut bacterium to go on the offensive against its host.
- Earth
Great river cycles carbon quickly
Some of the organic material carried to the sea by the Amazon is thousands of years old, but much of the carbon in carbon dioxide emanating from the river was stored in plants for less than a decade.
- Earth
What’s Gotten into Everybody? Survey of bodily contaminants finds encouraging declines and new exposures
The U.S. population's exposure to lead, secondhand smoke, and certain other harmful chemicals has trended downward, but some newly measured contaminants are present in a sizable fraction of the nation's residents, according to an updated report.
- Health & Medicine
Echinacea Disappoints: There’s still no cure for the common cold
The folk remedy echinacea shows no benefit against the common cold.
- Planetary Science
Cassini eyes youthful-looking Saturnian moon
On July 14, the Cassini spacecraft came within 175 kilometers of the south polar region of Saturn's bright, tiny moon Enceladus, revealing a tortured terrain of faults, folds, and ridges.
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Fickle Finger’s Funny Feel: Digit illusion modifies touch perception
The brain rapidly adjusts its internal map of the body's skin surface, according to a new study of people who underwent laboratory procedures that induced illusions of finger growth or shrinkage.
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Boning Up: Tissue for grafts grown inside the body
Scientists have discovered a new way to stimulate one part of an animal's body to grow extra bone tissue that can be transplanted elsewhere.
- Paleontology
Young and Helpless: Fossils suggest that dinosaur parents cared
Skeletal remains found in the fossilized eggs of an early dinosaur hint that adults of the species may have cared for their hatchlings.
