News

Chemistry

Carbon nanotubes burn when flashed

Carbon nanotubes can ignite when exposed to an ordinary camera flash.

Humans

Science Derby: Student research and inventions nab awards

On May 12, more than 1,200 high school students came to Louisville, Ky., to vie for more than $3 million in scholarships and prizes at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

Health & Medicine

Look Ma, Too Much Soy: Hormone in infant food reduces immunity in mice

Large doses of the estrogenlike hormones that occur naturally in soybeans weaken the immune systems of mice.

Materials Science

Beyond Jell-O: New ideas gel in the lab

Researchers have created a new class of hydrogels that might prove useful in tissue engineering, drug delivery, and other biomedical applications.

Health & Medicine

Surgical Option: Removal of ovaries can prevent cancers in women at risk

In women who harbor mutations in one of the BRCA genes, ovary removal reduces the risk of developing ovarian, peritoneal, and breast cancers.

Health & Medicine

High elevation linked to hormone dearth

Elderly Peruvian women living at very high altitudes have lower blood concentrations of some key hormones than do their lowland counterparts.

Math

Prime Effort: Powerful conjecture may be proved

A mathematician may have finally proved Catalan's conjecture, a venerable problem in number theory concerning relationships among powers of whole numbers.

Physics

Tiny tungsten beams lord over light

By filtering radiated heat, a novel microstructure of crisscrossed tungsten beams promises to improve the efficiency of light bulbs and of heat-to-electricity conversion devices.

Health & Medicine

Freeing up the mouse genome

Scientists have assembled the DNA sequences from a strain of the common lab mouse and made the draft genome available for free over the Internet.