News
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Gene variant boosts diabetes risk
Variant forms of two genes that encode receptor proteins for the hormone adiponectin show up more often in people with type 2 diabetes than in people who don't have the disease.
- Health & Medicine
Tackling stroke and heart risks
Lowering cholesterol in diabetes patients lessens their risk of heart attack or stroke, even when their initial cholesterol was in the normal range.
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Sperm defender has second role
An antimicrobial protein may also trigger maturation of sperm.
- Health & Medicine
Compound in salsa kills off Salmonella
Cilantro, one of the key ingredients of salsa, harbors an antibacterial compound that attacks Salmonella bacteria.
- Physics
Squashed spheres set a record for filling space
Modestly deformed spheres can stack with unexpected compactness.
- Health & Medicine
Hepatitis C drugs are less effective in black patients
A standard drug combination for hepatitis C is less likely to knock out the virus in blacks than in whites.
- Earth
Newspaper’s Footprint: Environmental toll of all the news that’s fit to print
The environmental impacts of getting a newspaper dropped on your doorstep each morning vastly outweigh those of receiving the same information via a handheld electronic device.
- Chemistry
Weighty Discovery: Chemical screening technique identifies potential anthrax drug
A new version of mass spectrometry could speed the process of drug discovery by enabling more accurate screening of thousands of chemicals at once.
- Animals
Well-Tuned Bats: These animals are what they hear
Two studies of bats find that neighbors can live in virtually different worlds because their echolocation calls are tuned to detect different prey.
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Genetic Pickup: Did animals get brain genes from bacteria?
Genes that make brain chemicals may have been acquired from bacteria.
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Setting a Stage for Cancer: Another reason for women not to drink while pregnant
Drinking alcohol during pregnancy can cause a range of birth defects in newborns, and researchers have now shown that, in rats, it also increases the risk of breast tumors in adult offspring.
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A Fetching Lexicon: Language clues come from dog’s vocabulary
A research team finds that a 9-year-old border collie displays a keen facility for learning word meanings, providing new support for the theory that simple types of thinking practiced by some nonhuman animals also make word learning possible in toddlers.
