News
- Astronomy
Deepest Vision Yet: Hubble takes ultralong look at the cosmos
Astronomers unveiled the deepest visible-light portrait of the universe ever taken, a million-second-long exposure by the Hubble Space Telescope that includes near-infrared images of what appear to be the most-distant galaxies known.
- Anthropology
Brain Size Surprise: All primates may share expanded frontal cortex
A new analysis of brains from a variety of mammal species indicates that frontal-cortex expansion has occurred in all primates, not just in people, as scientists have traditionally assumed.
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Scrambled Dogma: Stem cells may make new eggs in women
Scientists may have come up with a new explanation for how a woman's biological clock works.
- Earth
Diesel fumes suppress immune response
Recurring exposure to soot particles from diesel exhaust fumes reduces the immune system's capacity to fend off infection, tests on rodents indicate.
- Health & Medicine
Two arthritis drugs work best in tandem
Two anti-inflammatory drugs for rheumatoid arthritis—methotrexate and etanercept—work better together than either does individually.
- Earth
Pompeii debris yields calamity clues
The magnetic characteristics of rocks and debris excavated from Pompeii reveal the changing temperatures of the volcanic ash cloud that smothered the Italian city in A.D. 79.
- Anthropology
Extinct ancestor wasn’t so finicky
Contrary to much anthropological thought, the genus Paranthropus showed as much dietary and behavioral flexibility as ancient Homo species did between 3 million and 1 million years ago.
- Earth
Deep Pacific waters warmed in recent years
Oceanographic data gathered across the North Pacific in 1985 and again in 1999 indicate that the deepest waters there have been heating up.
- Chemistry
New champions among corrosive microbes
Newly discovered strains of bacteria have developed a metabolic shortcut for eating away iron with great efficiency.
- Materials Science
Cinching nanotubes into tough fibers
Irradiating bundles of carbon nanotubes can lead to tougher fibers.
- Physics
Radioactive sprinkles keep machines true
Needing tiny radioactive sources to calibrate medical scanners with ever-sharper vision, an Australian team dipped tiny balls the size of candy sprinkles into a radioactive liquid.
- Earth
Lowering the Boom? Impact crater may predate extinction of the dinosaurs
Analyses of sediments from the Yucatán in Mexico suggest that an extraterrestrial impact there more than 65 million years ago actually happened about 300,000 years before mass extinctions of dinosaurs occurred.
