News
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Widows show third-year rebound
Women whose husbands die largely overcome their grief-related problems, including depression and social isolation, by about 3 years after their loss, according to a national study.
By Bruce Bower - Chemistry
Germ-killing plastic wrap
Scientists have developed biodegradable plastics that release natural germ-killing agents onto the foods wrapped inside.
By Janet Raloff - Chemistry
Toxic runoff from plastic mulch
Pesticide runoff from tomato fields covered with sheets of plastic can kill fish, clams, and other aquatic life.
By Janet Raloff - Chemistry
New solution for kitchen germs
Acidic electrolyzed water appears to kill foodborne germs more effectively than a bath of dilute bleach.
By Janet Raloff -
Brains generate a body of feeling
Happiness, sadness, and other basic emotions activate unique networks of brain areas that track the body's internal status.
By Bruce Bower -
Abused kids lose emotional bearings
Physical abuse and neglect appear to undermine preschoolers' emotional development in different ways.
By Bruce Bower - Physics
Electron breakup? Physics shake-up
A controversial theoretical proposal that challenges more than a century of theory and experiments suggests that loose electrons in liquid helium may break into pieces, dubbed electrinos.
By Peter Weiss - Computing
Virtual stampede sees faces in crowd
A new computer model based on particle interactions suggests ways to prevent a panicked crowd from stampeding.
By Laura Sivitz - Physics
One-molecule chemistry gets big reaction
Carrying out a widely used chemical reaction on one molecule at a time, researchers demonstrate unprecedented control of molecular behavior and, possibly, the ability to make novel nanotechnology devices and compounds that can't be created with ordinary chemistry.
By Peter Weiss - Plants
Glitch splits hermaphrodite flowers
In a newly proposed scenario, polyploidy may trigger perfectly good hermaphrodite plants to evolve gender forms.
By Susan Milius - Astronomy
Craft finds where sun’s corona gets its hots
New findings may help explain an enduring solar riddle: Although the sun's outer atmosphere lies thousands of kilometers above the visible surface of the sun, it's about 1,000 times hotter.
By Ron Cowen - Health & Medicine
Insulin inaction may hurt even nondiabetics
Flawed insulin activity may lead to blood changes that foster atherosclerosis, even in people who don't have diabetes.
By Janet Raloff