Charlotte Schubert

All Stories by Charlotte Schubert

  1. Chemistry

    Burned by Flame Retardants?

    One particular class of flame retardants—polybrominated diphenyl ethers—is accumulating at alarming rates in the environment, taints human breast milk, and has toxic effects similar to the now-banned PCBs.

  2. Earth

    EU moves against flame retardants

    The European Union has provisionally voted to ban the use and importation of nearly all members of a family of flame retardants known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers.

  3. Earth

    Life on the Edge

    Will a mass extinction usher in a world of weeds and pests?

  4. Tech

    Quantum bell rings to electron beat

    A new nanoscale transistor that parcels out electrons with metronome-like regularity has the potential to lead to designs for electronic noses and tiny devices inside of cell phones.

  5. Astronomy

    Shocks jolt jet set galaxy, X rays reveal

    A new image of the nearby galaxy Centaurus A reveals the first details of a phenomenon associated with the core of many galaxies: a huge jet of high-energy particles shooting out from a supermassive black hole.

  6. Animals

    20/20 lenses coat body of sea creature

    The skeleton of brittlestars doubles as an array of optically precise lenses that rival plastic microlenses designed by engineers.

  7. Health & Medicine

    Insect-saliva vaccine thwarts parasite

    Mice inoculated with a component of sand fly saliva develop immunity to Leishmania, a protozoan that infects hundreds of thousands of people in the tropics each year.

  8. Ecosystems

    Fish stocking may transmit toad disease

    Hatchery-raised trout can transfer a deadly fungus to western toads, bolstering the view that fish stocking may play a role in amphibian population declines.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Busting the Gut Busters

    Scientists are uncovering a cache of specialized weaponry used by bacteria that can spear holes in the intestine, perforate it, force it to change shape, and then spew toxins that attack other organs.

  10. Bacteria live inside bacteria in mealybug

    In a new twist on how life forms can exploit each other and with implications for how complex cells originated, scientists have discovered one bacterium living inside another.

  11. Health & Medicine

    Herpes virus homes in on cancer target

    Herpes simplex virus 1 has an affinity for cells with a mutation that marks many tumors, indicating how the virus may be refined as a cancer therapy and that certain new drugs might attack herpes itself.

  12. Vitamin A calibrates a heart clock, 24-7

    Scientists have discovered a molecular clock that keeps the circulatory system in sync with the rest of the body, and they show it's regulated by vitamin A.