News
- Materials Science
Explosive tempers
Researchers have demonstrated that carbon nanotubes, once ignited, can detonate explosives.
- Animals
Proxy Vampire: Spider eats blood by catching mosquitoes
Researchers studying food preferences among spiders report finding the first one with a taste for vertebrate blood.
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High Times for Brain Growth: Marijuana-like drug multiplies neurons
A drug that functions as concentrated marijuana does may spur the process by which the brain gives birth to new nerve cells.
- Chemistry
Chemical Dancing: Chemists choreograph molecular moves for Nobel honor
This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to three scientists for their work on a versatile strategy for synthesizing all manner of chemical compounds in an environmentally friendly way.
- Anthropology
Encore for Evolutionary Small-Timers: Tiny human cousins get younger with new finds
Excavations in an Indonesian cave have yielded more fossils of short, upright creatures that lived as recently as 12,000 years ago.
- Earth
Drought’s heat killed Southwest’s piñon forests
The heat accompanying a drought and a plague of bark beetles seem to explain the deaths of swathes of piñon pine trees across the Southwest in 2002 and 2003.
- Tech
Road Warriors: Robotic vehicles triumph over desert obstacles
In a landmark contest that has spurred advances in robotic-vehicle technology, five driverless racing machines piloted themselves over more than 200 kilometers of rugged desert terrain.
- Health & Medicine
Vaccine Clears Major Hurdle: Injections offer new tool against cervical cancers
An experimental vaccine against the virus that causes most cancers of the cervix has passed a test typically needed for regulatory approval.
- Paleontology
Raptor Line: Fossil finds push back dinosaur ancestry
Fossils of a newly discovered raptor dinosaur species suggest that the reptile's lineage is older and more widespread than previously suspected.
- Materials Science
Filling in the blanks
Scientists have added precision to a patterning technique called microcontact printing.
- Planetary Science
Mission to the outer limits
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has taken up temporary residence at the Kennedy Space Center, where engineers are doing final testing before the craft begins its 9-year voyage to the outer solar system.
- Earth
The browning of Europe
The lengthy heat wave and drought that struck Europe in the summer of 2003 stifled the growth of vegetation and thereby reduced the amount of carbon dioxide that the continent's plants extracted from the atmosphere.
