News

  1. Mass illness tied to contagious fear

    Researchers have linked a recent outbreak of illness at a Tennessee high school to psychological factors rather than toxic gas exposure, as originally suspected.

    By Bruce Bower
  2. Health & Medicine

    Nerve cells of ALS patients harbor virus

    Fragments of viral genetic material show up with unusually high frequency in nerve tissue of patients with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, suggesting a link between the virus and this lethal illness.

    By Nathan Seppa

  3. For geneticists, interference becomes an asset

    A new method of disrupting genes, called RNA interference, works in mouse cells.

    By John Travis
  4. Astronomy

    X-ray Data Reveal Black Holes Galore

    Using a sensitive, new X-ray telescope, astronomers have identified the origin of the high-energy part of the X-ray background and found that supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies are far more numerous than visible-light surveys indicate.