Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Fat Fuels PCB Damage: Diet influences toxic effects leading to heart disease
Certain types of dietary fats can magnify PCB damage to artery cells in a way that sets the stage for cardiovascular disease.
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Hearing Better in the Dark: Blindness fuels ability to place distant sounds
New evidence indicates that blind people estimate the locations of distant sounds more accurately than sighted people do, even if sight loss didn't occur until adolescence or young adulthood.
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A.M. and P.M. Clocks: Fruit fly brain has double timekeepers
Two research teams have pinpointed one group of fly-brain neurons keeping time for morning activity and a different neuron group performing the same function for evening activity.
- Chemistry
Breakdown: How Three Chemists Took the Prize
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists for their discovery of how cells mark proteins for destruction with a molecular tag called ubiquitin, otherwise known as the kiss of death.
- Planetary Science
Mars Rovers: New evidence of past water
Twin rovers on opposite sides of the Red Planet have found additional evidence that liquid water once flowed there.
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Trash to Treasure: Junk DNA influences eggs, early embryos
A type of DNA once thought to be little more than genetic clutter may play a role in gene expression in mammalian eggs and newly formed embryos.
- Math
A Catalog of Random Bits
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
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Verbal sighting in brains of the blind
Brain areas typically responsible for visual processing instead contribute to verbal skills in blind people.
- Planetary Science
Martian water everywhere
Combining data taken from two craft orbiting Mars with images and spectra collected by one of the Mars rovers, a scientist has found evidence that a body of water greater in area than all the Great Lakes combined once covered the Red Planet.
- Physics
To freeze this liquid, add heat
A wrong-headed mixture of liquid starch, water, and a solvent freezes when heated.
- Earth
Extra rainfall may stem warming in Midwest
Increased precipitation in parts of the Midwest may reduce the temperature increases expected to occur in the next few decades as a result of global warming.
- Health & Medicine
Drug-resistant staph causes more pneumonia
A recently discovered variant of Staphylococcus aureus that is resistant to some antibiotics became a major cause of severe pneumonia among people who caught the flu last winter.
