News
- Astronomy
Rocky, overweight planet shakes up theories
Kepler-10c is a rocky exoplanet 17 times as massive as Earth, and astronomers are puzzled as to how it formed.
- Health & Medicine
Health risks of e-cigarettes emerge
Research uncovers a growing list of chemicals that end up in an e-cigarette user’s lungs, and one study finds that an e-cigarette’s vapors can increase the virulence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
- Chemistry
Bacteria take plants to biofuel in one step
Engineered bacterium singlehandedly dismantles tough switchgrass molecules, making sugars that it ferments to make ethanol.
- Psychology
Stereotypes might make ‘female’ hurricanes deadlier
Precautions may get shelved by those in the path of severe storms with feminine names, leading some to suggest that storms should be named after animals.
- Health & Medicine
Brain’s support cells play role in hunger
Once considered just helpers for neurons, astrocytes sense the hormone leptin and can change mice’s appetites.
- Life
Drug candidate takes new aim at MERS
An experimental drug that shuts down construction of virus-making factories could become a new weapon against MERS.
- Tech
Lasers heal damaged rodent teeth
Handheld laser spurs stem cells into action, regrowing dentin in drilled teeth.
- Archaeology
First pants worn by horse riders 3,000 years ago
A new study indicates horse-riding Asians wove and wore wool trousers by around 3,000 years ago.
- Animals
Reef fish get riled when intruders glow red
A male fairy wrasse gets feisty when he can see a rival’s colorful fluorescent patches.
- Climate
Violent storms may shatter sea ice
Tall waves’ effect on sea ice hints at troubled water in the future.
- Particle Physics
Proton’s magnetic properties pinned down
A precise measurement of a proton’s magnetic properties could help reveal subtle differences between matter and antimatter.
- Life
Starchy foods more filling than fiber, lab tests suggest
Tests of gut microbe digestion of potato starch and fiber suggest that moving away from grass-heavy ancestral diets may not be the reason for obesity epidemic.
