News
- Health & Medicine
Placebos are dead, long live placebos
A study provides new evidence for the placebo effect and suggests a mechanism through which placebos might benefit patients with Parkinson's disease.
- Planetary Science
Galileo finds spires on Callisto
The sharpest images ever taken of Jupiter's icy moon Callisto show a group of features never seen before on the remote body—icy, knoblike spires that show signs of slow but steady erosion.
- Astronomy
X rays trace fierce stellar winds
A high-resolution X-ray view of the Rosette nebula, a nearby star-forming region, has revealed for the first time that the stellar winds from massive stars heat surrounding gas to a scorching 6 million kelvins.
- Chemistry
Novel material fights against cavities
A new material that dentists might eventually put under fillings and braces secretes calcium and phosphate ions to rebuild teeth as cavities form.
- Chemistry
Argon keeps chips and lettuce crisp
A new technique replaces the air in food packages with argon instead of widely used nitrogen, improving taste and shelf life.
- Chemistry
Tiny spheres may deliver oral insulin
Researchers have developed microscopic spheres that can sneak insulin past the stomach so it can be absorbed in the small intestine.
- Health & Medicine
Study challenges surgery for lung disease
Patients with the most severe emphysema shouldn't undergo major surgery that removes part of their damaged lungs.
- Health & Medicine
Walking and eating for better health
A low-fat diet and regular exercise can ward off diabetes in people at high risk of developing the disease.
- Health & Medicine
Gene implicated in deadly influenza
A strain of influenza virus that struck in Hong Kong in 1997 got some of its lethality from a mutation in the gene encoding an enzyme called PB2.
- Earth
Antarctic sediments muddy climate debate
Ocean-floor sediments drilled from Antarctic regions recently covered by ice shelves suggest that those shelves were much younger than scientists had previously thought.
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Glutamate paths surface in schizophrenia
Three new studies indicate that altered transmission of glutamate, a key brain chemical, plays an influential role in the severe mental disorder known as schizophrenia.
- Animals
Even deep down, the right whales don’t sink
A right whale may weigh some 70 tons, but unlike other marine mammals studied so far, it tends to float rather than sink at great depths.
