News
- Earth
Bursting in Air: Satellites tally small asteroid hits
On average, a small asteroid slams into Earth's atmosphere and explodes with the energy of 1,000 Hiroshima-size blasts once every thousand years or so, a rate that is less than one-third as high as scientists previously supposed.
- Planetary Science
Leapin’ Lava! Volcanic eruption on Io breaks the record
Pointing a ground-based telescope at Jupiter's moon Io, astronomers have recorded the most powerful volcano ever observed in the solar system.
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Life or Death: Immune genes determine outcome of strep infection
Subtle variations among people's immune genes may largely account for radically different outcomes when people get a strep infection.
- Physics
Quantum quirks quicken thorny searches
A researcher has come up with a quantum algorithm for identifying one or more items in a large, unsorted database when complete information about the search target is unavailable.
- Earth
Future Looks Cloudy for Arctic Ozone
Clouds that drive ozone loss in the Antarctic turned up in force during the most recent Arctic winter.
- Health & Medicine
Gene change linked to poor memory
A subtle change in a gene encoding a brain chemical may give some people better memory skills than others.
- Health & Medicine
Slow brain repair seen in Huntington’s
In people with Huntington's disease, the brain tries to replace dying nerve cells.
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Scanning a brain that’s out of tune
Scientists have scanned the brain of a man who had great difficulty playing a tune and showed that his brain doesn't react normally to music.
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Mutant mice resist morphine’s appeal
A protein on nerve cells appears to be the key to developing morphine addiction.
- Computing
Software’s beginnings
The earliest known use of the term software to describe computer programs dates back to 1958.
- Computing
‘Love bug’ lessons
In early May, the malicious ILOVEYOU computer virus shut down hundreds of thousands of computers and caused several billion dollars in damage.
- Computing
A loosely woven Web
The World Wide Web is less like a network of heavily interconnected superhighways and more like a jungle of one-way streets often leading to dead ends.
