News
- Tech
Body-fluid battery
A battery that's activated by body fluids such as saliva or urine may one day power devices ranging from disposable home health-care testing kits to emergency radio transmitters that turn on with a lick.
- Health & Medicine
Protein fingered in rare psychosis
A protein is pivotal in bringing on the psychotic attacks that beset people with porphyria, a rare inherited disease.
- Animals
Bumblebee 007: Bees can spy on others’ flower choices
Bumblebees that watched their neighbors feast on unusual flowers often later checked out the same kinds of blossoms themselves, a behavior that amounts to social learning.
- Health & Medicine
A New Role for Statin Drugs? Cholesterol fighters may reduce deaths soon after heart attacks
Statin drugs given within 24 hours of a heart attack improve a patient's chance of surviving.
- Tech
Wings warp for birdlike agility
An easily maneuverable, bird-size airplane whose wings can change shape in flight may be able to carry out a variety of assignments in tight spots.
- Chemistry
Class Acts from New Pesticides: Chemicals have little effect on mammals
Two new classes of selective pesticides immobilize and eventually kill many crop-damaging insects by interfering with a cell receptor unique to those pests.
- Materials Science
Fog Be Gone: Nanocoating clarifies the view
Scientists have created a nanocoating that prevents fogging and reflection on glass surfaces.
- Astronomy
Recipe for a Heavyweight: Making a massive star
New findings strongly support the notion that at least some massive stars form much as their lighter-weight siblings do, by packing on material from a surrounding disk of gas and dust.
-
Olives Alive: Extra-virgin oil has anti-inflammatory properties
A molecule isolated from extra-virgin olive oil has anti-inflammatory properties similar to those of ibuprofen.
- Anthropology
Chimps to People: Apes show contrasts in genetic makeup
The first comparison of the chimpanzee genome to that of people has revealed new DNA disparities between ourselves and the primate species most closely related to us.
- Humans
Movies put smoking in a bad light
Smokers in American films are more likely to be villains than heroes, a review of movies from the 1990s shows.
-
Chimps ape others to learn tool use
Chimpanzees appear to develop traditions of tool use by copying one another's behavior and conforming to a successful approach.
