News
- Health & Medicine
SARS virus can spread in lab animals
At least two types of mammals can acquire and transmit the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and Chinese animal traders have high rates of past exposure to the virus.
- Anthropology
Anklebone kicks up primate debate
The discoverers of a roughly 40-million-year-old anklebone in Myanmar say that it supports the controversial theory that anthropoids, a primate group that includes monkeys, apes, and humans, originated in Asia.
- Health & Medicine
Acid blockers stop stomach ulcers, too
People who get ulcers from frequent use of anti-inflammatory painkillers can lessen their risk by simultaneously taking acid-blocking drugs.
- Earth
Toxic cleanups get a boost
Researchers have developed and field-tested a new technique that identifies specific soil microbes that can break down environmental pollutants.
- Ecosystems
Will Climate Change Depose Monarchs? Model predicts too-wet winter refuges
A computer analysis suggests that eastern monarch butterflies may not be able to tolerate the increasingly moist climate in Mexico, their current wintering site.
- Earth
Not Just Neurotoxic: Pesticide chlorpyrifos affects heart and liver cells
A pesticide known to be toxic to the brain may also have subtle effects on heart and liver tissues of animals exposed to this substance during early development.
- Tech
Plastic Memories: Polymer materials store data permanently
Researchers have fabricated a memory device that stores data permanently in electrically-conducting polymers.
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Whiffs of Perception: Sniffing activates the mind’s nose
People spontaneously sniff while imagining various smells, an act that intensifies odor perception.
- Physics
Humpty-Dumpty Effect: Acoustically, people resemble large eggs
The first measurements of how people intrinsically scatter sound waves indicate that, acoustically, a human body resembles a hard ellipsoid of the same height and girth as the person.
- Paleontology
Northern Extinction: Alaskan horses shrank, then disappeared
Horses that lived in Alaska shrank dramatically in body size before they went extinct at the end of the last ice age.
- Astronomy
Sound of the fury
On Oct. 28, the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft recorded the radio wave "sound" of a powerful solar flare as it raced toward Earth.
- Astronomy
Chow Down! Milky Way gobbles its closest known neighbor
A tiny, newly discovered galaxy being shredded by the gravity of the Milky Way is our galaxy's closest known neighbor, residing just 42,000 light-years from the Milky Way's center.
