News
- Earth
Arctic snow was dirtier in early 1900s
Arctic snow collects less soot now than it did a century ago, but it's still dirtier than it was before the Industrial Revolution.
- Animals
Bats hum for sugar too
Some nectar-feeding bats metabolize sugars as rapidly as hummingbirds do.
-
Believers gain no health advantage
Strong religious beliefs or practices don't appear to benefit depressed or socially isolated heart attack survivors.
- Health & Medicine
When antioxidants go bad
Overproduction of antioxidants, usually thought to be beneficial, is the cause of an inherited heart disease.
- Earth
O River Deltas, Where Art Thou? Coastal sinking stalls sediment accumulation
The western coast of Siberia lacks river deltas because of the way the terrain has subsided since the end of the last ice age.
- Physics
Crueltyfree: Counting photons without killing them
A delicate quantum measurement counts photons without destroying them.
- Astronomy
Separation Anxiety: Cosmic collision may shed light on dark matter
The debris from an ancient collision of galaxy clusters seems to show cosmic dark matter behaving in a puzzling way.
-
Groomed for Trouble: Mice yield obsessive-compulsive insights
Mice lacking a gene that makes a certain brain protein display behaviors much like those of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, a poorly understood psychiatric ailment.
- Animals
High Volume, Low Fidelity: Birds are less faithful as sounds blare
In noisy surroundings, normally faithful female zebra finches flirt with unfamiliar males.
- Health & Medicine
Infectious Obesity: Adenovirus fattens stem cells
Some cases of obesity may result from infection by a virus that can transform adult stem cells into fat-storing cells.
- Health & Medicine
If You Can Stomach It: Obesity surgery extends life span
Drastic weight loss achieved through gastric bypass and other stomach surgeries improves long-term survival for very obese people.
- Physics
Frizzed molecular carpets
Measurements of the speed with which heat travels along single hydrocarbon molecules could aid in the design of molecular electronics.
