News
- Astronomy
Cosmic rays from the solar system
Dust grains from the Kuiper belt, a storehouse of comets and other frozen bodies in the outer solar system, are the source of some of the lower energy cosmic rays that bombard Earth.
- Health & Medicine
Schizophrenia spurs imaging network
Thanks to a federal grant, a team of researchers will establish a national database of brain images that will allow for expanded investigations of the neural basis of schizophrenia.
- Health & Medicine
First Line of Defense: Hints of primitive antibodies
After looking in primitive marine invertebrates that are considered to be close relatives to vertebrates, immunologists find families of genes that might provide clues as to how early immune systems evolved.
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Eye-Grabbing Insights: Visual structure grips infants’ attention
Babies take their first major strides with their eyes, not their legs, as they rapidly distinguish among playpens, pacifiers, and a plethora of other objects.
- Animals
Lizard’s Choice: Mating test pits physique versus domain
When she decides to move in, is it him or is it his real estate?
- Health & Medicine
Coconspirator? Genital herpes linked to cervical cancer
Having a genital herpes infection doubles the risk of cervical cancer among women who have human papillomavirus.
- Astronomy
Neutron Star Stuff: Just neutrons, no quarks
A new study suggests that although neutron stars may be weird, they’re not strange.
- Tech
Nanotech Switch: Strategy controls minuscule motor
Researchers have modified a rotating protein fragment so that it starts and stops spinning with the addition and removal of zinc.
- Earth
Wildfire Below: Smoldering peat disgorges huge volumes of carbon
Set alight by wildfires, thick beds of decaying tropical plant matter can pump massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, rivaling those produced globally each year from the combustion of fossil fuels.
- 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.
