News
- Astronomy
Strange Stars? Odd features hint at novel matter
Two stellar corpses thought to be made of neutrons may actually contain weird forms of matter never observed before.
- Animals
Big-Eyed Birds Sing Early Songs: Dawn chorus explained
Researchers report a strong relationship between eye size and the light intensity at which birds start to sing in the morning.
- Materials Science
Membrane Mastery: Nanosize silica speeds up sieve
A novel modification to polymer membranes gives researchers a means to tune certain filters so they separate molecules more quickly and more selectively.
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European Union for Ants: Supercolony reigns from Italy to Portugal
European researchers have documented the largest ant supercolony yet, a network of cooperating nests that stretches from Italy to the Atlantic.
- Health & Medicine
Cardiac Culprit: Autopsies implicate C-reactive protein in fatal heart attacks
Of people who died suddenly, those who succumbed to a heart attack had an abundance of the inflammation indicator C-reactive protein in the blood, even though few had had outward signs of heart problems.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Remodeling: Superwinds star in early universe
New measurements reveal that some of the earliest galaxies in the universe produced winds so powerful and persistent that they blew material from one galaxy to another, temporarily separating dark matter from visible matter and profoundly influencing the evolution of future generations of galaxies.
- Paleontology
Older Ancestors: Primate origins age in new analysis
A controversial new statistical model concludes that the common ancestor of primates lived 81.5 million years ago, about 16 million years earlier than many paleontologists have estimated.
- Earth
Feminized Frogs: Herbicide disrupts sexual growth
At concentrations currently found in water, the widely used weed killer atrazine hormonally strips male frogs of their masculinity and may be partly responsible for global amphibian declines.
- Health & Medicine
Drug for dry mouth may prevent lung cancer
A drug prescribed for a condition called dry mouth stymies formation of precancerous lung lesions in cigarette smokers.
- Health & Medicine
Gene mutation tied to lung cancer
Scientists have identified a gene, dubbed LKB1/STK11, that is often mutated in people with a particularly deadly form of lung cancer.
- Health & Medicine
Compound attacks pancreatic cancer
A protein fragment dubbed NK4 can stall the development of pancreatic cancer in mice.
- Health & Medicine
St. John’s wort hinders cancer drug
The herbal remedy St. John's wort can interfere with the effectiveness of the anticancer drug irinotecan.
