News

  1. Anthrax genomes compared for terrorism clues

    Investigators seeking clues to last fall's anthrax attack have analyzed the genome of the anthrax bacterium.

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  2. Planetary Science

    Hard bodies pair off

    About one out of every eight asteroids traveling near Earth has a rocky companion.

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  3. Health & Medicine

    D-fending the Colon: Bile component triggers vitamin D receptor

    The protein that enables cells to respond to vitamin D also helps the gastrointestinal tract protect itself from an especially dangerous acid in bile.

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  4. Tech

    Live Tour: Joystick journeys reveal tumor interiors

    A new holographic technique may someday enable doctors to skip certain biopsies and choose instead to take video excursions inside suspicious growths in skin or internal body linings.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Wholesome Grains: Insulin effects may explain healthful diet

    Overweight people who eat whole grains rather than refined ones appear better equipped to manage their blood-sugar concentrations with minimal production of the hormone insulin, which could help explain why a diet rich in whole grains appears to guard against type II diabetes and heart disease.

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  6. Earth

    Shelter from Space Storms: Energy rebounds from Earth

    NASA satellite observations show that Earth's outer atmosphere interacts dramatically with the solar wind and shields the planet from it.

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  7. Health & Medicine

    Amyloid Buster? New drug hinders Alzheimer’s protein

    By disabling a dementia-linked protein, a synthetic drug is showing a tantalizing capacity to interfere with the formation of waxy amyloid deposits like those that accumulate in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.

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  8. Baby Facial: Infants monkey with face recognition

    Between ages 6 months and 9 months, babies apparently lose the ability to discriminate between the faces of individuals in different animal species and start to develop an expertise in discerning human faces.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Liquid could aid vaccine storage and use

    A new medium for vaccines could remove the need to either refrigerate or rehydrate vaccines, hurdles that impede immunization campaigns in poor countries.

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  10. Health & Medicine

    Beating two infections with one vaccine

    Identifying key similarities between related viruses could enable researchers to coax some vaccines to do double duty.

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  11. In depression, the placebo also rises

    In a small group of depressed patients, those whose condition improved after taking placebo pills for 6 weeks displayed many of the same brain changes observed in people who benefited from an antidepressant drug.

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  12. Health & Medicine

    Spice component versus cancer cells

    Curcumin, a compound in the spice turmeric, teams up with an immune-system protein to kill prostate cancer cells in a new laboratory study.

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