Uncategorized
- Animals
Ant Enforcers: To call in punishment, top ant smears rival
In Brazilian ant colonies where a female has to fight her way to the top, she stays in power through some judicious gang violence.
- Health & Medicine
Stroke Stopper: New vaccine curbs blood vessel damage in lab animals
A vaccine that desensitizes the immune system to a protein inside blood vessels prevents some strokes in laboratory rats.
- Physics
Superconductor has odd electron pairing
Although electrons pair up in many superconductors, there's one in which they join together in two different ways, new calculations confirm.
- Animals
Blame winter for the vanishing sparrows
Changes in winter farming practices may help explain a puzzling drop in number of rural house sparrows in southern England.
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Hear, hear: Key ear part regenerates
Hairlike projections that allow ears to detect sounds regenerate every 2 days.
- Physics
Clues to exotic particles found again
Although a correction to theory last year watered down its results, further analysis of a muon experiment still provides hints of new subatomic particles.
- Earth
Uncertainty returns over sex-change fish
Scientists question whether a potentially gender-bending hormone found in polluted Florida streams is responsible for masculinized female fish.
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Grief travels different paths
A rare study of elderly individuals before and after the death of their spouses finds that a surprisingly large number stayed on an even emotional keel.
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Rather than early exposure to pets preventing allergies, I suspect that families who have allergies may generally tend to avoid having pets in the home because they cause physical discomfort to allergy sufferers. Terry LeeYerington, Nev.
- Health & Medicine
Pet exposure may reduce allergies
Exposing children to cats or dogs at an early age may make them less prone to allergies later in life.
- Anthropology
Gene change hints at brain evolution
A genetic mutation found only in humans first appeared around 2.8 million years ago, perhaps setting the stage for brain enlargement in the Homo lineage.
- Tech
Pocket Sockets
Keenly aware of user frustration with the short-lived batteries in cell phones and other portable electronics, researchers are rushing to work out the bugs in tiny fuel-cell power plants that will be as small as batteries—but last a lot longer and be refuelable.
