News
- Animals
Toothy valves control crocodile hearts
The odd cog teeth of the crocodile heart may be the first cardiac valve known to control blood flow actively.
- Chemistry
HArF! Argon’s not so noble after all
Researchers have for the first time coerced argon into forming a stable and neutral compound with other elements.
- Computing
Computation Takes a Quantum Leap
A quantum computation involving a custom-built molecule furnishes experimental evidence that a quantum computer can solve certain mathematical problems more efficiently than can a conventional computer.
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Egg’s missing proteins thwart primate cloning
Scientists have identified a reason why cloning a person may be difficult, if not impossible.
- Physics
Not even bismuth-209 lasts forever
Touted in textbooks as the heaviest stable, naturally occurring isotope, bismuth-209 actually does decay but with an astonishingly long half-life of 19 billion billion years.
- Earth
Harbor waves yield secrets to analysis
New findings by ocean scientists may help port officials in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, predict potentially destructive waves in the city's harbor.
- Tech
Tipping tiny scales
A prototype detector based on a tiny silicon cantilever that operates in air has achieved a 1,000-fold sensitivity boost when measuring tiny quantities of chemical agents.
- Planetary Science
Roving on the Red Planet
NASA last month selected the landing sites for rovers scheduled to begin exploring the Martian surface next January.
- Earth
Seismic waves resolve continental debate
New analyses of seismic waves that have traveled deep within Earth may answer a decades-old question about the thickness of the planet's continents.
- Health & Medicine
Protein implicated in Parkinson’s disease
Inhibiting the natural protein cyclo-oxygenase-2, or COX-2, might help fight Parkinson's disease.
- Physics
To pack a strand tight, make it a helix
The optimal way to pack long strings into small spaces is to coil them into helices—particularly the types of helices found in proteins and perhaps DNA.
- Computing
Tight packaging for digitized surfaces
A novel digital compression scheme may make it practical to transmit detailed models of three-dimensional surfaces over the Internet.
