News
- Health & Medicine
Vaccine didn’t cause heart deaths
Fatal heart attacks that recently struck two people after they were vaccinated against smallpox were probably unfortunate coincidences, not adverse consequences of vaccination.
- Physics
Fusion device crosses threshold
By sparking thermonuclear reactions, a machine called Z has joined the big leagues among potential technologies for producing power from controlled nuclear fusion.
- Astronomy
Echoes of a stellar outburst
Light from the outburst of a star has revealed its dusty surroundings.
- Health & Medicine
Shots stop allergic reactions to venom
An immune therapy prevents allergic reactions to the sting of the jack jumper ant, a pest common to Australia.
- Physics
Light rambles through room-temperature ruby
Researchers have dramatically slowed light within a solid at room temperature.
- Math
Prime conjecture verified to new heights
Computations show that all even integers up to 4 x 1014 can be written as the sum of two prime numbers, lending support to the Goldbach conjecture.
- Astronomy
Comet LINEAR: Breaking up isn’t hard to do
New images reveal that Comet LINEAR, which passed near the sun late last month, has broken into at least 10 fragments.
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Depression may play a role in stroke risk
Feelings of hopelessness and other signs of major depression markedly raise a person's likelihood of suffering a stroke.
- Physics
Attractive atoms pick up repulsive habits
Rubidium atoms intrinsically attract each other, but new experiments near absolute zero have induced the atoms to repel each another instead.
- Earth
Wildfires spread across a parched West
Dozens of lightning-sparked wildfires seared the western United States last week, adding hundreds of thousands of acres of charred terrain to a tally that promises to make this fire season the worst in recent decades.
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Ibuprofen cuts Alzheimer protein build-up
The common nonprescription drug ibuprofen may lessen abnormal accumulation of beta-amyloid in the brain, perhaps explaining how the drug decreases the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
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Cleft-lip mutations may hinder virus
Having identified the mutated gene responsible for a syndrome involving cleft lip or palate, a research team finds that the recessive mutation also may confer an antiviral advantage to people who carry one copy of this gene.
