News

  1. Second cold-sensing protein found

    Researchers have found a second mammalian cell-surface protein that enables nerve cells to recognize cold temperatures.

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  2. Animals

    Ballistic defecation: Hiding, not hygiene

    Evading predators may be the big factor driving certain caterpillars to shoot their waste pellets great distances.

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  3. Health & Medicine

    Upsetting a Delicate Balance: One gene may underlie various immune diseases

    One form of an immune-system gene shows up more frequently in people with diabetes or certain thyroid diseases than in people free of those illnesses.

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  4. Astronomy

    Chemistry of the Cosmos: Quasars illuminate the young universe

    Measuring the composition of some of the earliest structures in the universe, two teams of astronomers have unveiled new findings about star formation in the young cosmos.

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  5. Chemistry

    Nanoscale Networks: Superlong nanotubes can form a grid

    Researchers have made extraordinarily long carbon nanotubes and aligned them to create tiny transistors and sensors for detecting chemical and biological agents.

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  6. Paddle Power: Surprising shape of key cellular pore unveiled

    A molecular pore that controls the flow of ions into cells has an unexpected shape and mechanism.

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  7. Earth

    Sensing a vibe

    A sprawling network of seismometers that covers the Los Angeles area could be adapted to provide warning of damaging ground motions from earthquakes in the seconds before those seismic vibes arrive.

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  8. Physics

    Crystal Bash: Shocking changes to light’s properties

    Prized, light-manipulating microstructures known as photonic crystals may transform light in new and technologically tantalizing ways when jolted by shock waves.

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  9. Anthropology

    Ancestral Bushwhack: Hominid tree gets trimmed twice

    In separate presentations at scientific meetings, two anthropologists challenged the influential view that the human evolutionary family has contained as many as 20 different fossil species.

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  10. Egg’s missing proteins thwart primate cloning

    Scientists have identified a reason why cloning a person may be difficult, if not impossible.

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  11. 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.

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  12. 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.

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