Uncategorized
- Paleontology
Early animals dethroned
Cell division patterns in controversial Chinese fossils place them outside the animal kingdom.
- Ecosystems
Groundwater dropping globally
Nine-year record collected from orbit finds supply dropping mostly due to agriculture.
- Life
Pigeons rival primates in number task
Trained on one-two-three, the birds can apply the rule of numerical order to such lofty figures as five and nine.
- Humans
Network analysis predicts drug side effects
A computer technique can foresee adverse events before medications are widely prescribed.
- Life
Drugs activate dormant gene
A compound that blocks DNA unwinding can spur production of a critical brain protein in mice, leading to hope for a therapy for Angelman syndrome.
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- Space
First Earth-sized planets netted
The Kepler space telescope gets one step closer to its mission of discovering habitable worlds by finding two orbs of terrestrial proportions orbiting a distant sunlike star.
- Humans
Fewer fires in Africa these days
How flames spread, not how frequently people start them, controls burning on the continent.
- Life
BPA sends false signals to female hearts
The ingredient of some plastics and food packaging can interfere with cardiac rhythm at surprisingly low concentrations.
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2011 Science News of the Year: Atom & Cosmos
Not so fast, neutrinos News of particles zipping along faster than light (SN: 10/22/11, p. 18) was met with universal skepticism — including from the physicists in Italy who reported the results. But the Gran Sasso National Laboratory’s OPERA team hasn’t found any source of error that could explain how the neutrinos appeared to shave […]
