News
- Health & Medicine
Challenges in testing for West Nile virus
The Food and Drug Administration is trying to figure out how blood banks can detect signs of West Nile infection in blood donors and, eventually, test donated blood for the virus itself.
- Anthropology
Iceman mummy shares last meals
DNA analyses of food remains from the intestines of a 5,000-year-old mummified man found in Europe's Tyrolean Alps indicate that his last two meals included meat from mountain goats and red deer, as well as wild cereals.
- Earth
It’s high tide for ice age climate change
Tides may sometimes be strong enough to tug Earth into an ice age.
- Tech
Beads and glue defeat forgers
Researchers have devised a cheap, translucent material that, when embedded in credit cards and other items, would endow the items with unique identifiers that are almost impossible to tamper with or copy.
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Trashed proteins may help immune system
Up to 30 percent of a cell's proteins get recycled as soon as they roll off the cellular assembly line.
- Earth
Moderate flows help carve rivers
Measurements of erosion in a rocky river channel in Taiwan suggest that the day-to-day flow of water accounts for more rock wear there than occasional catastrophic floods do.
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Gene found for big, firm sheep rumps
Scientists have found the gene that gives sheep unusually big, muscular bottoms.
- Astronomy
Are solar eruptions triggered a loopy way?
Astronomers have identified a new solar mechanism that may explain some coronal mass ejections.
- Health & Medicine
Panel ups RDAs for some antioxidants
An Institute of Medicine panel reported that dietary antioxidants such as vitamins A and E can limit cellular damage from free radicals but warned that studies in people have never adequately established a direct connection between antioxidant consumption and prevention of chronic disease.
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Colossal study shows amphibian woes
The largest amphibian data set ever crunched—936 populations in 37 countries—confirms global declines.
- Archaeology
Early New World Settlers Rise in East
New evidence supports the view that people occupied a site in coastal Virginia at least 15,000 years ago.
- Health & Medicine
Gene expression helps classify cancers
Using gene chips to study the activity of thousands of genes simultaneously, researchers showed that a common cancer of white blood cells—diffuse large B-cell lymphoma—is in fact two distinct diseases.
