News
- Planetary Science
Northern Exposure: The inhospitable side of the galaxy?
Our solar system's periodic motion from one side of the galaxy to the other could expose life on Earth to massive amounts of cosmic rays and cause recurring, catastrophic mass extinctions.
- Paleontology
Forest Primeval: The oldest known trees finally gain a crown
Recently unearthed fossils provide new insights about the appearance of the world's oldest known trees, plants that previously were known only from preserved stumps.
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Violent Justice: Adult system fails young offenders
Laws that allow people under age 18 to be tried and imprisoned as adults have unintended effects, promoting an increase in new violent offenses among youth handled by the adult justice system.
- Planetary Science
Little Enceladus disturbs Saturn’s magnetic field
Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus is acting as a brake on the giant planet's magnetic field.
- Physics
Tiny particles baffle physicists, again
An experiment failed to confirm the existence of a new elementary particle called the sterile neutrino, but its results could still point to some new physics.
- Earth
On the rocks
New research explains why a cancer-causing form of chromium has been turning up in ground and surface waters far from industrial sources.
- Physics
Toward imaging single biomolecules
Experiments have given additional evidence that a future generation of X-ray sources called free-electron lasers may be able to image single biomolecules.
- Physics
This is your brain on a chip
Biophysicists have put neurons on a chip and induced them to form multiple patterns of synchronized firing, the mechanism at the basis of memory.
- Astronomy
Eclipsing a black hole
A chance eclipse has enabled astronomers for the first time to measure the width of a disk of swirling, hot matter around a supermassive black hole.
- Earth
Increase in chemical disposals
Industrial facilities in the United States released more than 4 billion pounds of chemicals into the environment in 2005, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory.
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Psychotherapy aids bipolar treatment
Any of three forms of psychotherapy enhances emotional stability in people with bipolar disorder who already receive standard medications for that severe psychiatric ailment.
- Anthropology
Disinherited Ancestor: Lucy’s kind may occupy evolutionary side branch
A controversial analysis of a recently discovered jaw from a 3-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis puts Lucy's species on an evolutionary side branch that eventually died out.
