News
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Health & MedicineVirus Stopper: Vaccine could prevent most cervical cancers
A vaccine fashioned from a protein found on human papillomavirus-16 protects women from long-term viral infections that can lead to cervical cancer.
By Nathan Seppa -
EarthDioxin cuts the chance of fathering a boy
More girls than boys are fathered by men who sustained a relatively high environmental exposure to dioxin from a 1976 factory explosion in Italy.
By Janet Raloff -
Viruses that slay bacteria draw new interest
Bacteriophages, viruses that kill bacteria, may be able to cure seafood poisoning, decontaminate poultry, and tackle anthrax.
By John Travis -
Gene therapy grows bone in mice and rats
A new gene therapy tested in rodents regrows bone by transforming skin and gum cells into bone-making cells or into cells that mass-produce a molecule called bone morphogenetic protein-7, which induces bone growth.
By Science News -
AstronomyNew sky map: Look, Ma, no Milky Way!
Using a radio telescope to record emissions from hydrogen gas, astronomers have penetrated the murk of the Milky Way to map the entire southern sky.
By Ron Cowen -
EarthBursting 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.
By Sid Perkins -
Planetary ScienceLeapin’ 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.
By Ron Cowen -
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.
By John Travis -
PhysicsQuantum 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.
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EarthFuture Looks Cloudy for Arctic Ozone
Clouds that drive ozone loss in the Antarctic turned up in force during the most recent Arctic winter.
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Health & MedicineGene change linked to poor memory
A subtle change in a gene encoding a brain chemical may give some people better memory skills than others.
By John Travis -
Health & MedicineSlow brain repair seen in Huntington’s
In people with Huntington's disease, the brain tries to replace dying nerve cells.
By John Travis