News
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Progestin adds to breast cancer risk
Women taking estrogen are more prone to get breast cancer if they are also taking the hormone progestin.
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Listen to the shapes
People use still-unspecified acoustic cues to discern the shapes of hidden, vibrating plates.
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Tough talk for depressed husbands
Positive comments directed by depressed men to their wives often elicit negative responses from the women, a conversational style that may contribute to the men's mood problems.
- Animals
Hormone still rules no-tadpole frogs
Coqui frogs may skip the tadpole stage, but within the egg, they undergo a metamorphosis ruled by thyroid hormone.
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Brain cells work together to pay attention
Cells in the brain's cortex may coordinate their electrical activity as attention shifts from visual to tactile information.
- Earth
Hey polluters! This billboard’s for you
Motorists generally like and respond to personalized billboard messages about when an engine tune-up may be warranted.
- Health & Medicine
HIV sexual spread exploits immune sentinels
The virus that causes AIDS latches onto a protein called DC-SIGN to hitch a ride on immune cells in mucus membranes and spread through the body.
- Health & Medicine
Cell transplants combat diabetes in mice
Scientists have successfully reversed diabetes in mice by harvesting immature pancreatic cells that make insulin from one mouse, growing them in culture, and transplanting them into a mouse with the disease, which then recedes.
- Planetary Science
Meteoric wallop may have diversified life
A new study suggests that the evolutionary burst on Earth some 540 million years ago occurred around the time that cosmic debris began pummeling our planet at an increasing rate.
- Materials Science
Rice hulls could nourish Silicon Valley
Scientists are developing ways to extract and purify the silicon that occurs naturally in rice hulls.
- Earth
Pollution Keeps Rain up in the Air
New satellite data indicate that aerosol pollution can break up water droplets in clouds and stop rain.
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Corn Defenses: Bitten plants deploy gut-rotting enzyme
Some corn varieties that arose on the Caribbean island of Antigua defend themselves with chemical attacks that leave insect gut linings in tatters.
