News
- Health & Medicine
You’re Feeling Sleepy . . . : Anesthetics activate brain’s sleep switch
Anesthesia's sedative effect may depend on activating sleep circuits in the brain.
- Plants
Time Capsules: Seeds sprout 120 years after going underground
An experiment designed by a botany professor to last longer than his own life has demonstrated that seeds of two common flowers still sprout and blossom despite more than a century in a bottle.
- Health & Medicine
Flower Power: Corn lily compound stops cancer in mice
A new study in mice suggests that cyclopamine, a plant derivative that causes birth defects in animals, can inhibit medulloblastoma, a brain cancer in children.
- Planetary Science
Planetary Beginnings: Data reveal Earth’s quick gestation
Two new studies confirm that Earth's core formed in a hurry—during the first 30 million years after the solar system's birth.
- Chemistry
Down to the bone
A new method for making bone cement could simplify hip and knee replacements and improve the surgeries' outcomes.
- Materials Science
What the mail must go through
Mail irradiation in Washington, D.C. is damaging valuable objects and documents intended for scientific study or archiving at the Smithsonian, the White House, and other government organizations.
- Astronomy
An image to relish
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a high-resolution image of an object that looks like a giant hamburger.
- Computing
Writing faster with your eyes
A new method for gaze-operated, hands-free text entry is faster and more accurate than using an on-screen keyboard.
- Health & Medicine
Lost and found
Researchers have shown that a drug may shepherd a mutated protein—gone astray in people with cystic fibrosis—into its proper place.
- Health & Medicine
Processing corn boosts antioxidants
Cooking sweet corn increases its disease-fighting antioxidant activity, despite decreasing its vitamin C content.
- Planetary Science
It’s only a sharper moon
Astronomers have taken what appears to be the sharpest image of the moon ever recorded from Earth.
- Math
Packing spheres around a sphere
A mathematician has proved that the optimal arrangement of 12 identical spheres around and touching a 13th is a highly symmetric pattern based on the 12-faced geometric shape known as the dodecahedron.
