News
- 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.
- 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.
- Materials Science
Nanotube carpet mimics gecko feet
Carbon nanotubes can outdo the extraordinary sticking power of a gecko's foot hairs.
- 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.
- 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.
