News
- Earth
New contender for Earth’s oldest rocks
Observing rare isotopes in rocks along the Hudson Bay in Northern Quebec suggest the rocks have remained intact for 4.28 billion years, making them Earth's oldest.
By Sid Perkins - Health & Medicine
Window of opportunity for stroke treatment widens
Use of clot-busting drugs as long as 4½ hours after an event pays dividends later.
By Nathan Seppa - Physics
Photons caught in the act
Physicists manipulated a microwave pulse and could essentially watch it transition from a quantum state into the realm of classical physics.
- Health & Medicine
Closing in on Rett syndrome
Scientists find that a particular part of the mouse brain is responsible for behavioral abnormalities associated with Rett syndrome, an autism spectrum disease that strikes females.
- Health & Medicine
Diabetes drug helps shed pounds
The diabetes drug pramlintide facilitates year-long weight loss in obese volunteers, a new study shows.
By Nathan Seppa - Space
Lowdown on the sun
The current solar minimum is the lowest — and one of the longest — recorded in the past 50 years, since modern measurements began.
By Ron Cowen - Space
Large Hadron Collider shuts down early for the winter
CERN announces that needed repairs, plus high fuel costs, will delay the first planned collisions until next spring.
By Ron Cowen - Planetary Science
Saturn’s rings may not be as young as they look
Saturn's rings might be more massive, and thus older, than researchers had believed.
By Ron Cowen - Life
Nanoparticles: size and charge matter
Nanoparticles can be designed for targeted delivery of drugs or genes into the body. New work reveals details of how blood proteins respond to these particles.
- Health & Medicine
This is the brain on age
The activity of genes in men's brains begins to change sooner than it does in women's brains, a new study shows.
- Humans
Stone Age seafood fans
Excavations in two Gibraltar caves suggest that Neandertals, like modern humans, regularly visited the Mediterranean shore to complement a land-based diet with seafood
By Bruce Bower - Earth
Continental clash cooled the climate
The collision between India and Asia set off events that caused long-term cooling in Earth’s climate, new research suggests.
By Sid Perkins