News
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Crippled fungus acts as vaccine
A genetically crippled strain of yeast can vaccinate mice against deadly normal strains.
- Astronomy
What a blast!
Astronomers have glimpsed a rare, long-lived neutron-star explosion that may represent the burning of carbon just beneath the surface of this superdense star.
- Astronomy
More moons for Saturn
With the discovery of two additional moons, the ringed planet now has a retinue of 24 known satellites orbiting it.
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Brain sets sights on mind’s eye
Brain regions implicated in vision may also contribute to the images in the "mind's eye."
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Man’s brain incurs disgusting loss
A brain-damaged man yields clues to the neural organization responsible for experiencing disgust.
- Health & Medicine
Is penicillin-allergy rate overstated?
A study finds that 20 of 21 people who reported having a penicillin allergy when filling out paperwork during a hospital visit in fact don't have one, suggesting that the prevalence of this allergy is overstated.
- Health & Medicine
Marker signals esophageal cancer
Silencing of the gene that encodes the cancer-suppressing protein APC is common in people with esophageal cancer, suggesting that physicians might use this genetic abnormality as a marker for the disease.
- Physics
When all is a spin, calm is dragged in
When laboratory vortices are mixed to create the equivalent of a tornado in a hurricane, the "hurricane" may gobble up spots of calm from the outside world.
- Physics
Hot little levers write beaucoup bits
Arrays of microscopic tips may offer a way to pack digital data more tightly and transfer it more quickly than is possible with magnetic hard disks.
- Physics
Particle hunt off, collider comes down
Despite tantalizing, last-minute hints of a long-sought, mass-giving particle called the Higgs boson, dismantling of the Large Electron-Positron collider has begun.
- Earth
Life Landed 2.6 Billion Years Ago
Unusually carbon-rich rocks found in eastern South Africa may push back the evidence of life on land to 2.6 billion years ago, more than twice the current age of indisputably terrestrial organisms.
- Animals
First mammal joins the eusocial club
Because naked mole rats exhibit permanent physical traits that distinguish certain castes of a colony, they belong to the same grouping as so-called eusocial insects such as bees, ants, wasps, and termites.
