News
- Health & Medicine
Soy compounds thwart estrogen
Soy-stress compound interferes with estrogen activity, possibly pointing the way to a new breast-cancer drug.
- Earth
UV-pollutant combo hits tadpoles hard
Coincident exposure to ultraviolet light and an estrogen-mimicking pollutant severely jeopardized the chance a tadpole would reach adulthood.
- Earth
Sewage linked to fish-gender quirks
Releases from sewage treatment plants appear to impair reproductive tissues in fish.
- Earth
Pollutants shape baby-gator gonads
The same pollutants that appear to shorten the length of a grown-alligator's phallus actually lead to this organ's lengthening in baby gators.
- Earth
POPs treaty enacted
A new United Nations treaty that seeks to phase down or eliminate production and use of 16 persistent, toxic pollutants has gone into effect.
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Underwater balancing act
Researchers have identified a gene that influences the growth of crystals in the inner ears of zebrafish and found that modifying this gene can cause the fish to lose their sense of gravity.
- Planetary Science
Bone-dry Mars?
The presence of large amounts of olivine, a mineral that undergoes rapid chemical transformation when exposed to liquid water, argues against ancient oceans or lakes on Mars.
- Earth
Seals’ meals, plastic pieces and all
Bite-size pieces of plastic chipped from wave-battered consumer products work their way up marine food chains, suggests a study of fur seals in Australia.
- Materials Science
Water Repellency Goes Nano: Carpet of carbon nanotubes cleans itself
Forests of carbon nanotubes coated with Teflon yield a superhydrophobic material—the ultimate self-cleaning surface.
- Earth
Blame the Sea? Ocean may be melting ice shelf from below
Significant portions of a large Antarctic ice shelf just south of one that suddenly broke apart in February 2002 are rapidly thinning and may suffer a similar, catastrophic demise in less than a century.
- Anthropology
Stone Age Code Red: Scarlet symbols emerge in Israeli cave
Lumps of red ocher excavated near human graves in an Israeli cave indicate that symbolic thinking occurred at least 90,000 years ago, much earlier than archaeologists have traditionally assumed.
- Astronomy
Out of Hiding: Lost asteroid reappears, bringing surprises
A long-lost asteroid that came close to Earth in 1937 has been spotted again, and its projected path steers clear of Earth.
