News
- Earth
Flame retardants take a vacation
The lifetime in blood of flame- retarding diphenyl ethers, now-ubiquitous pollutants, ranges from 2 weeks to 2 years, Swedish researchers find.
- Health & Medicine
Cocoa puffs up insulin in blood
Eating foods flavored with cocoa powder as opposed to other flavorings stimulates surplus production of the sugar-processing hormone insulin, but the metabolic implications of the finding aren’t yet known.
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- Chemistry
Nobel Prize in Chemistry Opens Channels: Research reveals vital function of tiny pores in cell membranes
The 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry honors two researchers for their pioneering work on the structure and mechanisms of cell membrane channels, tiny pores that regulate the flow of ions and water molecules across cells.
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A Shot at Pain Prevention: Nerve-healing protein relieves rats’ misery
A chemical that spurs growth of nerve cells during fetal development may provide a new way to treat severe chronic pain that results from nerve damage.
- Physics
New Quarktet: Subatomic oddity hints at pentaparticle family
Evidence for the second particle ever found to include five of the fundamental building blocks known as quarks and antiquarks suggests that a whole family of such so-called pentaquarks exists.
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Poor Relations: Casino windfall reveals poverty’s toll on Cherokee kids’ behavior
A study of Indian families before and after they began receiving an annual financial windfall supports the theory that poverty undermines psychological health, at least among children.
- Paleontology
Fossils of Flyers: Bones tell why Atlantic albatross disappeared
Ancient albatross fossils suggest that rising sea levels 400,000 years ago wiped out the North Atlantic population of short-tailed albatross.
- Animals
Your Spiral or Mine? Snail gene reverses coil, makes new species
A snail with a shell spiraling to the right can't mate readily with a lefty, so changes in the single gene that controls shell direction have created new snail species.
- Health & Medicine
Centenarian Advantage: Some old folks make cholesterol in big way
People who live to be nearly 100 and their offspring are more likely to have large cholesterol particles in their blood, a condition conducive to good health.
- Health & Medicine
Magnets, my foot!
Shoe inserts with magnets have no more effect against foot pain than insoles without them.
- Earth
Smog chemicals found even in rural western plains
Analyses of the atmosphere over the south-central United States show that gases emitted from the region's oil and natural gas industries contribute to air pollution—even over remote Kansas cornfields—that can surpass the noxious mix found in urban areas.
