News
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Getting Attached: Sugar-protein link joins embryo to Mom
Biologists may have found the molecular handshake that attaches an embryo to the wall of the uterus.
- Animals
Retaking Flight: Some insects that didn’t use it didn’t lose it
Stick insects may have done what biologists once thought was impossible: lose something as complicated as a wing in the course of evolution but recover it millions of years later.
- Earth
Predicting geomagnetic storms
Recent observations with an Earth-orbiting spacecraft may provide new ways to predict when solar temper tantrums will cause the geomagnetic storms that disrupt communications systems on Earth and harm satellites.
- Health & Medicine
Stroke protection: A little fish helps
As little as one serving of fish per month offers protection against the most common form of stroke.
- Ecosystems
Why didn’t the beetle cross the road?
Beetle populations confined to specific forest areas by roads seem to have lost some of their genetic diversity.
- Health & Medicine
Drug protects mouse eggs from radiation
Mice protected by a drug from radiation-induced sterility have normal offspring.
- Health & Medicine
Cheap hypertension drug works best
An old-fashioned pill for preventing high blood pressure and some heart disease appears to work better than new, more expensive drugs.
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It’s a tough job, but native bees can do it
An organic watermelon field in California near remnants of wild land still had enough bees of North American species to pollinate a commercial crop, but habitat-poor farms didn't.
- Planetary Science
Mars reveals more frozen water
Planetary scientists have discovered ice near the edge of Mars' south polar cap.
- Archaeology
Old legend dies hard
People who first entered King Tutankhamen's tomb did not suffer from a legendary curse but instead lived long lives.
- Health & Medicine
Silencing a gene slows breast-tumor fighter
The protein encoded by the HOXA5 gene plays a key role in fighting breast cancer, helping to switch on cancer-suppressing genes.
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Hands, not eyes, hold clue to illusion
Psychologists disprove a leading hypothesis for the size-weight illusion—an error that arises when people try to estimate the weights of two bodies of different sizes but the same mass.
