News
- Astronomy
Magnetic-mapping mission resurrected
The European Space Agency successfully launched Cluster II, a group of four spacecraft that will fly in tandem to generate a three-dimensional map of Earth's magnetosphere.
- Astronomy
Spirograph in the sky
Some 2,000 light-years from Earth, an elderly star has ejected its outer layers to form a puffy, gaseous cocoon that resembles a "spirograph" pattern.
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Hormone dulls a tongue’s taste for sweets
The hormone leptin may suppress the tongue's ability to taste sugary substances.
- Animals
Snapping shrimp whip up a riot of bubbles
High-speed video and fancy math demonstrate that snapping shrimp make so much noise by popping bubbles.
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The brain spreads its sights in the deaf
Altered brain activity in deaf people may strengthen their peripheral vision.
- Health & Medicine
Fighting cancer from the cabbage patch
Extracts of foods belonging to the cabbage family can block the action of estrogen, a hormone that fuels many cancers.
- Health & Medicine
Nerves in heart show damage in Parkinson’s
Some patients with Parkinson's disease also have destruction of nerve terminals in the heart that affects blood pressure.
- Materials Science
Titanium makes move toward mainstream
Inventors of a new process for producing titanium claim that their method can reduce the metal's cost to one-third its current price.
- Health & Medicine
Cells profilerate in magnetic fields
Magnetic fields such as those found within a few feet of outdoor electric-power lines could make cells that are vulnerable to cancer behave like tumors.
- Physics
Most-Wanted Particle Appears, Perhaps
Hints of the Higgs boson—the crucial and last undetected fundamental particle predicted by the central theory of particle physics—have cropped up at a particle collider in Switzerland just as the machine is slated to be dismantled to make room for a more powerful collider.
- Earth
Nonstick but not nontoxic
A proliferating pollutant shed by nonstick products and surfactants caused neonatal deaths and developmental impairments in tests with rodents.
- Earth
Testing computers’ hazardous potential
The approved test for evaluating the ability of wastes to leach toxic metals fails to identify lead risks from some electronics equipment.
