News
- Astronomy
Is this young star ready to form planets?
New observations suggest that a mere stripling of a star, which might be as young as 300,000 years old, has already formed planetesimals, the building blocks of planets.
- Tech
Technique senses damage before it hurts
A new technique for automatically detecting damage to aircraft, buildings, and other structures may lead to practical damage-monitoring systems by reducing false alarms that make today's laboratory prototypes unsuitable for real-world use.
- Animals
Birds with a criminal past hide food well
Scrub jays that have stolen food from other bird's caches hide their own with extra care.
- Health & Medicine
Fragile X protein reveals its RNA partners
The master gene behind fragile X syndrome—the most common inherited form of mental retardation—encodes a protein that binds to strands of messenger RNA.
- Earth
Ripples Spread Wide from Ground Zero
Seismic vibrations produced by the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan were recorded by seismometers scattered across the Northeast, some more than 425 kilometers away.
- Earth
Coral-killing army recruits human bugs
The army of pathogens responsible for black band disease, which kills corals, contains some human bacteria that polluted waters carry out to sea.
- Earth
Greeks sailed into ancient Trojan bay
A combination of sedimentary analysis and careful reading of classical literature helps pinpoint where the Greek fleet that attacked Troy came ashore.
- Earth
Warm spell did little for Eocene flora
A rapid warming period that began the Eocene epoch dramatically reshaped North America's animal community but not the continent's plants.
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Sight sounds off in brains of the deaf
Deprive the brain of access to sounds, and it reorganizes so that tissue typically consigned to handling acoustic information instead joins the visual system.
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Babies show an eye for faces
By 9 weeks of age, babies can learn to recognize and favor a new face in a matter of minutes.
- Health & Medicine
Genomes of dangerous bacteria exposed
Researchers unveiled the genomes of bacteria that cause severe food poisoning, typhoid fever, and the plague that devastated the Middle Ages.
- Health & Medicine
Cancer drugs may thwart Huntington’s
Drugs developed to fight cancer could also be effective against Huntington's disease and several related neurodegenerative conditions.
