News
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Health & Medicine
Nervous tics in the heart
The irregular heartbeats sometimes triggered after a heart attack may be caused by abnormal nerve growth in heart tissue damaged by the attack.
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Health & Medicine
Waiting to exhale
A breath test that measures the activity of an enzyme involved in breaking down drugs in a person's body may help doctors minimize side effects from potent drugs such as docetaxel.
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Astronomy
New views of Jovian moons
The Galileo spacecraft has taken the highest-resolution images ever recorded of three of Jupiter's small, innermost moons.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Galaxies shine light on dark matter
Using a cosmic mirage known as gravitational lensing, astronomers have developed detailed maps of the distribution of dark matter, the invisible material believed to make up 90 percent of the mass of the universe.
By Ron Cowen -
Humans
Motor City hosts top science fair winners
The 2000 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair winners were announced in Detroit.
By John Travis -
Bdelloids: No sex for over 40 million years
Researchers find the strongest evidence yet for creatures that have evolved asexually for millions of years.
By Susan Milius -
Health & Medicine
Two studies offer some cell-phone cautions
A British review of research gave cell-phone safety a guarded endorsement, while new findings indicate that radiation from older cell phones can trigger a stress-response gene, at least in animals.
By Janet Raloff -
Health & Medicine
Drug combination may fight breast cancer
Retinoic acid, when combined with a drug that reverses a process called methylation in breast tumor cells, may awaken a key cancer-fighting gene.
By Nathan Seppa -
Astronomy
Astronomers rediscover long-lost asteroid
After 89 years of playing a cosmic version of Where's Waldo?, astronomers have located a long-lost asteroid named Albert.
By Ron Cowen -
Earth
Prescribed fire burns out of control
A fire set by the National Park Service to clear underbrush burned out of control, consuming more than 44,000 acres around Los Alamos, N.M.
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Grade-Schoolers Grow into Sleep Loss
By the sixth grade, many middle-class children may experience substantial sleep deprivation that has the potential to interfere with their ability to learn and pay attention.
By Bruce Bower -
Physics
Motor design flouts physical law
A proposed silicon device the size of a red blood cell would transform random thermal motion into useful mechanical power in violation of the second law of thermodynamics, its designers claim.
By Peter Weiss