News
- Health & Medicine
Salmonella seeks sweets
A sugarlike substance in the roots of lettuce may attract food-poisoning bacteria.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
Groundwater use adds CO2 to the air
Pumping out groundwater for crop irrigation or industrial purposes releases planet-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
By Sid Perkins - Health & Medicine
Earache microbe shows resistance
A strain of bacterium that causes middle ear infection is resistant to all antibiotics currently approved for the ailment.
By Nathan Seppa - Tech
Hooking up
Cleverly designed molecules can self-assemble into networks and stay robustly connected.
- Health & Medicine
Plugging Leaks: Manipulating receptors may impede sepsis
Manipulation of signaling proteins on blood vessels may help combat sepsis, an often fatal condition.
By Nathan Seppa - Physics
Rock, paper, toxins
A computer model simulates a kind of rock-paper-scissors competition among three species of virtual bacteria.
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Stimulant Inaction: ADHD drug’s mental lift proves surprisingly weak
A widely used drug often calms children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder but does little to alleviate the condition's underlying mental deficits.
By Bruce Bower - Planetary Science
Chilled Out? Ice could lurk beneath Martian equator
An immense volume of ice-rich material may underlie a formation that extends about one-quarter of the way around Mars' equator.
By Sid Perkins - Earth
Clay That Kills: Ground yields antibacterial agents
A special type of French clay smothers a diverse array of bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant strains and a particularly nasty pathogen that causes skin ulcers.
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Extreme Healing: Protein aids limb regrowth in newts
The ability of newts to regenerate severed limbs depends crucially on a protein released by the insulating sheath around nerves.
- Animals
Cousin Who? Gliding mammals may be primates’ nearest kin
Two species of small, little-known rain forest mammals may be primates' closest living relatives.
By Susan Milius - Health & Medicine
Early Arrival: HIV came from Haiti to United States
New analysis of 25-year-old blood samples indicates that HIV reached the United States in about 1969, 12 years before AIDS was first formally described.
By Brian Vastag