News
- Animals
Great spots for white sharks
The great white sharks of the eastern Pacific may be genetically isolated from the world's other white sharks, and tagging data reveal that the animals stick to specific routes and destinations.
- Health & Medicine
Sun, inflammation speed aging of skin
Gene profiles show inflammation is the key to making skin age, and sun exposure speeds the process.
-
New dating finds oldest coral yet
A sample of a black coral from a depth of 400 meters turns to be 4,200 years old.
- Earth
Dioxin’s long reach
Breast development is delayed in teenage girls who were exposed to the organic pollutant dioxin in the womb and in their mothers' breast milk.
- Tech
Diamond detectors
The quantum states of single diamond impurities work as magnetic sensors that could enable nuclear magnetic resonance to detect single atoms.
- Ecosystems
Predators return
Warming waters could push new predators into Antarctica's delicate ecosystems.
- Agriculture
Resistance to Bt crops emerges
Resistance to pest-killing cotton crops is spreading among one species of caterpillar, but techniques to prevent the spread of resistance appear to be working for five other species.
-
Gene variants shield against depression
Some child-abuse victims possess specific variations in a stress-regulating gene that decrease their likelihood of developing moderate or severe depression as adults, a research team reports.
-
Internet Seduction: Online sex offenders prey on at-risk teens
Most online sex crimes involve adults seducing psychologically vulnerable teenagers into sexual relationships, a finding at odds with public fears of Internet-using children falling prey to deceptive, violent sexual predators.
- Earth
Defining Toxic: Federal agencies look to cells, not animals, for chemical testing
Government scientists are collaborating to shift the testing of potentially toxic chemicals away from animals to methods that use high-speed automated robots, which should generate data relevant to humans faster and more cheaply than current methods.
-
On Top of Words: Spatial language spurs kids’ reasoning skills
Recent studies of spatial reasoning in deaf children support the notion that language helps people encode certain concepts and suggest that using spatial language with children may boost overall reasoning skills.
- Health & Medicine
Eye Protection: Antibiotic knocks back blinding disease
Twice-a-year administration of the antibiotic azithromycin to Ethiopian villagers greatly reduces cases of trachoma, a blinding eye disease.
