Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Brain’s hidden sewers revealed
Specialized cells host a hitherto unknown cleansing system.
- Planetary Science
Dawn mission to die another day
A glitch does not threaten the spacecraft’s survival, but it will delay an upcoming visit to the dwarf planet Ceres.
- Life
Mantis shrimp flub color vision test
Unexpectedly poor results on crustacean eye exams suggest there’s another way to perceive color.
- Earth
Antibacterial agent can weaken muscle
Triclosan impairs the power of the heart and other muscles in two species and at relatively low doses.
- Life
Smell deals with deprivation differently
One odor-related brain region called the orbitofrontal cortex keeps the sense primed for resumed input during a cold.
- Humans
Good times led to grisly custom
Ancient Chileans developed artificial mummification after an increase in the numbers of living and dead people made naturally preserved bodies hard to ignore.
- Physics
Molecules get a big chill
A new cooling method takes big groups of atoms closer to long-sought temperatures for exploring the nature of matter.
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New research on Native American origins takes anthropologists down memory lane
In school we learn that science proceeds logically from one experiment to the next, leaving in its wake a complete and certain body of knowledge. But science isn’t like that. It twists and turns, careens and tumbles and gets stuck in deep, sticky mudholes. And sometimes, science backtracks. That’s happened in cosmology recently, as observations […]
- Tech
Camera hack can spot cleaned-up crimes
Exploiting a standard tool of art conservation can help police find painted-over bloodstains.
- Chemistry
Method puts wrinkles in neat little rows
MIT researchers have discovered how to create perfect patterns of microscopic wrinkles.
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Saving primates with a dog and scat
View the video Graduate student Joseph Orkin, left, follows canine field assistant Pinkerton on a hunt for primate poop. Sun Guo-Zheng Joseph Orkin has found an unusual way to study highly endangered — and highly elusive — primates in southwestern China. Orkin hikes into isolated mountaintop forests accompanied by a four-legged assistant who avidly sniffs out scat left by […]
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Letters
Higgs affects inertia, not gravity In the articles on the Higgs field in the July 28 issue, the Higgs boson was described as giving rise to the mass and therefore the inertia of particles, and the articles said the Higgs causes particles to “resist motion.” Newton’s first law states that inertia or mass is the […]
