News

  1. Health & Medicine

    Making the optic nerve sprout anew

    A compound made during inflammation, a natural reaction to injury, can induce optic nerve regeneration in a lab-dish concoction including rat retinal ganglion cells.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Catching macular degeneration early

    Scientists have developed a test that uses the eye's ability to adapt to darkness as a test for age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in elderly people.

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  3. Animals

    That special wax lasts after courtship

    Sandpipers' special wax for their wings during the breeding season may have less to do with courting a mate and more to do with sitting on eggs.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    Stressing out

    A gene variant reduces people's response to the stress hormone cortisol, and people with the variant are less likely to have risk factors for heart disease and diabetes.

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  5. Archaeology

    Maya warfare takes 10 steps forward

    The discovery of hieroglyphic-covered steps on the side of a Maya pyramid has yielded new information about warfare between two competing city-states around 1,500 years ago.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    Into the Tank: Pressurized oxygen is best at countering carbon monoxide exposure

    Oxygen treatment for serious carbon monoxide poisoning prevents long-term brain damage best if delivered as pressurized gas.

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  7. Humans

    Flame Out: Fishy findings sustain, then snuff, stellar career

    Investigators have concluded that a young, up-and-coming physicist repeatedly faked data and committed other types of scientific misconduct.

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  8. Chemistry

    Hot Spuds: Golden path to acrylamide in food

    The browning reaction that imparts flavor to french fries and breads also creates acrylamide, an animal carcinogen.

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  9. Materials Science

    Molecular Separations: New artificial sieve traps molecules

    Researchers have created a metal-laced organic solid that acts as a sieve with nanosize pores for capturing molecules.

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  10. Making Mice Mellow: Rodents yield clues to improved anxiety drugs

    Mice bred to lack a gene for a certain enzyme exhibit reduced anxiety and greater curiosity in stressful laboratory tasks, suggesting a possible new avenue of research into anti-anxiety medications.

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  11. Tech

    Solar Surgery: Sunlight acts like laser

    By channeling sunlight down a fiber optic cable, scientists have produced laserlike beams that can burn tumors off major organs.

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  12. Milestones for Malaria: Parasite, mosquito genes decoded

    Unraveling the DNA of a malaria-causing parasite and of a mosquito that carries it may suggest new ways to combat the deadly disease.

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