News
- Earth
Sexual Hang-Up: Fish hormones change when oxygen is scarce
Oxygen deprivation—an escalating problem in freshwater ecosystems worldwide—tampers with sex hormones in carp and might underlie the decline in some fish and amphibian species.
- Anthropology
Pieces of a Disputed Past: Fossil finds enter row over humanity’s roots
Two new fossil discoveries have fueled scientific debates about the evolutionary status of a pair of species traditionally considered to have been our direct ancestors, Homo habilis and Homo erectus.
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Stem Cell Surprise: Blood cells form liver, nerve cells
Human blood contains stem cells that can be transformed outside the body into a variety of cell types, suggesting that a person's blood could someday provide replacement cells for that individual's damaged brain or kidney.
- Materials Science
Technique may yield vocal cord stand-in
A plastic material used in some biological implants could someday form a foundation for tissue that can repair or replace human vocal cords.
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Good taste in men linked to colon risks
Men with exceptionally sensitive powers of taste may face extra health risks, such as colon cancer.
- Health & Medicine
HIV in breast milk can be drug resistant
HIV-positive women who receive the drug nevirapine during pregnancy often have HIV that is resistant to the drug in their breast milk after they give birth.
- Health & Medicine
Designer RNA stalls hepatitis in mice
Using strips of synthetic RNA that interfere with normal gene action, scientists working with mice have stopped the progression of hepatitis.
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Dolly, first cloned mammal, is dead
Dolly, the first clone of an adult mammal, has been euthanized after acquiring a severe lung infection.
- Materials Science
Ceramic rebounds from stressful situations
The ceramic titanium silicon carbide can fully recover after being compressed to a degree that would leave most ceramics shattered and most metals permanently deformed.
- Chemistry
A safer antioxidant?
Scientists have developed a synthetic antioxidant that won't, at high doses, foster the tissue damage the compounds are meant to prevent.
- Tech
Worms may spin silk fit for skin
Silk cocoons could become puffs of valuable human proteins if a new bioengineering method pans out.
- Physics
New equation fits nitrogen to a T
An elaborate, new equation that yields more accurate values for nitrogen's properties might have a multimillion-dollar impact in the cryogenic fluids industry.
