News
- Tech
Lighting the Way for Water: New strategy for steering drops with finesse
Using a beam of ultraviolet light, researchers manipulate tiny drops of water on a surface—a demonstration that could lead to ultrafast and highly precise chemical reactions on a chip.
- Health & Medicine
Gene Delivery: Mouse study shows new therapy may reverse muscular dystrophy
A single defective gene causes muscular dystrophy, and researchers have now found a way to deliver a working copy of that gene to the entire muscular system in mice.
By Carrie Lock - Astronomy
Explosive News: Telescopes find signs of gentler gamma-ray bursts
Astronomers appear to have discovered an unexpected population of low-energy gamma-ray bursts, and they could be 10 times more numerous than previously-known higher-energy bursts.
By Ron Cowen - Health & Medicine
Stopping Alzheimer’s: Antibody thwarts disease in mice
Antibodies against amyloid protein, which gums up the brains of Alzheimer's patients, reverse a form of the disease in mice.
By Nathan Seppa - Earth
Twin satellites track water’s rise and fall
A pair of satellites launched in 2002 has detected small, regional changes in Earth's gravitational field that are caused by seasonal variations in rainfall and soil moisture.
By Sid Perkins - Humans
Where Ph.D.s pay off
Salaries for full-time scientists and engineers in the United States have generally outpaced inflation, but academic researchers tend to earn substantially less than their counterparts in industry and government.
By Janet Raloff - Materials Science
Charging gold with a single electron
Dropping a single electron onto a gold atom with a scanning tunneling microscope converts gold from its neutral state to an ionic state.
- Tech
Quantum dots light up cancer cells in mice
Brightly fluorescent crystals known as quantum dots have the potential to seek out cancerous cells in the body, a trick that could lead to highly precise cancer screening.
- Humans
Title IX: Women are catching up, but . . .
Though a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in academic settings has fostered women's participation in science, they still lag behind men in salaries and research opportunities.
By Janet Raloff - Astronomy
Young star’s glow suggests planet find
The X-ray outburst of a young, sunlike star might provide new insights about planet formation.
By Ron Cowen - Health & Medicine
Computers read mammograms to detect breast cancer
Mammogram–scanning computers can help radiologists detect breast cancers that would otherwise escape diagnosis.
By Ben Harder - Planetary Science
A little bit of Mars on Earth
Scouring an ice field in Antarctica, scientists have made the latest discovery of a chunk of rock that was blasted from Mars and fell to Earth.
By Ron Cowen