News
- Health & Medicine
New clue stirs up lithium mystery
Lithium and two other mood-stabilizing drugs may all work by depleting nerve cells of a chemical that the cells use to signal each other.
- Tech
Tiny rockets may advance minisatellites
A new type of miniaturized rocket may bring microspacecraft one step closer to reality.
- Health & Medicine
Drug cuts risk of seizures in pregnancy
An inexpensive drug treatment lessens the risk of seizures that sometimes strike and even kill women during pregnancy or immediately after delivery.
- Math
Squares, primes, and proofs
Mathematicians have proved the so-called local Langlands correspondence, a broad generalization of a surprising connection between prime numbers and perfect squares.
- Math
Losing to win
Two games of chance, each guaranteed to give a player a predominance of losses in the long term, can add up to a winning outcome if the player alternates between the two games.
- Health & Medicine
USDA gives nod to irradiating meats
The federal government approved food irradiation, the only technology known to kill an especially lethal strain of bacteria, for use on raw meats.
- Health & Medicine
This roe’s got a fish-E surprise
Scientists discovered a potent, new form of vitamin E, an antioxidant, in fish adapted for life in cold water.
- Health & Medicine
The salmon that went moo
People allergic to milk products could face potentially life-threatening risks by eating casein-treated fish.
- Animals
Who’s on first with hummingbird bills
A survey of 166 hummingbird species links sex differences in bill length to sex differences in plumage and to breeding behavior.
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Handsome blue tit dads have more sons
A female blue tit with a particularly dashing mate is more likely to have sons than is a female matched with a ho-hum guy.
- Animals
Marine Mules: Near-sterile hyrids boost coral diversity
Reef corals that spawn in great mixed-up soups of many species may be maintaining their diversity because their hybrids are sterile mules.
- Health & Medicine
Hemispheric Cross Talk: Brains show two sides of language function
Some people coordinate language use with both sides of their brains, allowing them to retain verbal skills after damage to one side or the other.
