News
- Earth
When pollutants take the Arctic route
The highest North American concentrations of at least one air pollutant from Asia can be found in Newfoundland, the continent's easternmost region.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
What’s happening to German eelpout?
Reproductive anomalies in eel-like fish may represent good markers of exposure to hormones or pollutants that mimic them.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
Flame retardants morph into dioxins
Sunlight can break down common flame retardants, now nearly ubiquitous in the environment, into unusual chemicals in the dioxin family.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
Reused paper can be polluted
Toxic chemicals can end up in recycled paper, making release of these reused materials into the environment potentially harmful.
By Janet Raloff -
Troubling Treat: Guam mystery disease from bat entrée?
A famous unsolved medical puzzle of why a neurological disease spiked on Guam may hinge on the local tradition of serving boiled bat.
By Susan Milius - Chemistry
Diamond in the rough
Researchers have found a collection of previously undiscovered diamondlike compounds in oil.
- Health & Medicine
Bone Builder: New drug could heal hard-to-mend fractures
A synthetic compound can heal broken bones that are so damaged they don't knit on their own, a study in rats and dogs shows.
By Nathan Seppa - Materials Science
Melt-Resistant Metals: Carbon coating keeps atoms in order
Shrink-wrapped in carbon, nanoscale metal chunks melt at extraordinarily high temperatures, suggesting carbon coatings as a route to higher heat resistance for materials and devices.
By Peter Weiss -
Gypsy Secret: Children of sea see clearly underwater
Children who regularly dive to collect food have better-than-normal underwater vision because their eyes adapt to the liquid environment.
By John Travis - Tech
Columbia Disaster Working Hypothesis: Wing hit by debris
The independent board investigating the breakup of the space shuttle presented its first detailed account of what might have caused the Feb. 1 disaster.
By Ron Cowen - Earth
Going Down? Probe could ride to Earth’s core in a mass of molten iron
A geophysicist suggests that scientists could explore Earth's inner structure by sending a grapefruit-size probe on a week-long mission to the Earth's core inside a crust-busting mass of molten iron.
By Sid Perkins - Anthropology
Stone Age Genetics: Ancient DNA enters humanity’s heritage
Genetic material extracted from the bones of European Stone Age Homo sapiens, sometimes called Cro-Magnons, bolsters the theory that people evolved independently of Neandertals.
By Bruce Bower