News
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Materials Science
Knitting with nanotubes
Researchers can draw fine yarns of carbon nanotubes from a reservoir of the microscopic cylinders.
- Physics
Putting the brakes on antihydrogen
By mixing ultracold antiprotons and antielectrons, physicists have created the first atoms of antihydrogen that move at a leisurely enough pace for direct measurements of their properties.
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Brain trait fosters stress disorder
A brain-scan study of pairs of twin brothers, in each of which only one twin had been a Vietnam combat veteran, indicates that the inheritance of an undersized brain structure called the hippocampus predisposes individuals to post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Ant cheats plant; plant cheats back
An Amazonian tree grows little pouches on its leaves to invite ants to move in and provide guard duty, but the tree drops the pouches from old leaves because ants ravage the flowers.
- Astronomy
Enlarging a Mars photo album
A new set of more than 18,000 images of Mars, posted online in early October, features the sharpest picture of the Red Planet ever taken by an orbiting spacecraft.
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