Uncategorized
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Hands, not eyes, hold clue to illusion
Psychologists disprove a leading hypothesis for the size-weight illusion—an error that arises when people try to estimate the weights of two bodies of different sizes but the same mass.
- Health & Medicine
Silencing a gene slows breast-tumor fighter
The protein encoded by the HOXA5 gene plays a key role in fighting breast cancer, helping to switch on cancer-suppressing genes.
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- Math
The Power of Partitions
Writing a whole number as the sum of smaller numbers springs a mathematical surprise.
- Earth
Excreted Drugs: Something Looks Fishy
Drugs that the body can't fully use enter waste water, where they may affect aquatic life—or wind up in tap water.
- Tech
Satellite links may don quantum cloaks
A theoretically foolproof scheme to shield secrets via the laws of quantum mechanics demonstrates its readiness to take on Earth-satellite communications.
- Health & Medicine
Common antibiotic may cure river blindness
Tests in cows suggest that tetracycline might kill the tiny worm that spreads river blindness, a disease that infects about 18 million people.
- Archaeology
Neandertals’ diet put meat in their bones
Chemical analyses of Neandertals' bones portray these ancient Europeans as skillful hunters and avid meat eaters, countering a theory that they mainly scavenged scraps of meat from abandoned carcasses.
- Astronomy
Black holes and galaxies may grow up together
Astronomers have new and, for the first time, quantitative evidence that bigger black holes reside at the centers of bigger galaxies.
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Mice have a sharp nose for pheromones
Mice can detect pheromones with great sensitivity and in a way that's distinct from that of the main olfactory system.
- Animals
Single singing male toad seeks same
Male spadefoot toads of the Spea multiplicata species evaluate male competitors by the same criterion females use.
- Physics
Stretched matter goes to unusual extremes
Researchers have discovered that several unusual forms of matter with extremely high or low densities can expand laterally in one direction and contract in another when extended.
