News
- Health & Medicine
Risky Flames: Firefighter coronaries spike during blazes
A disproportionate number of heart disease deaths among firefighters occur during blazes.
- Physics
Closer to Vanishing: Bending light as a step toward invisibility cloaks
Invisibility cloaks may be a long shot, but new optical tricks could help in the design of future computers.
- Chemistry
Waistline Worry: Common chemicals might boost obesity
A family of chemicals implicated in testosterone declines may also be contributing to recent spikes in obesity and diabetes.
- Earth
Young and Restless: Ancient Earth shows moving crust
The oldest rocks in the world show that Earth's shifting crust began its tectonic movements almost 4 billion years ago.
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Gene predicts sleepy performance
Variants in a circadian-rhythm gene predict how well people perform mental tasks when sleep deprived.
- Earth
World’s climate map gets an update
A century-old system of categorizing the world's climates has been updated to include modern weather data, thereby providing researchers with a tool to better verify results of their computer simulations.
- Health & Medicine
Hepatitis B found in wrestlers’ sweat
Traces of hepatitis B have turned up in the perspiration of wrestlers, suggesting that the virus could spread to their opponents and teammates.
- Paleontology
Catching evolution in the act
Paleontologists have unearthed fossils that provide direct evidence of something scientists had long suspected: The tiny bones in the middle ears of modern-day mammals evolved from bones located at the rear of their reptilian ancestors' jaws.
- Health & Medicine
Preemies respond to immunizations
Babies born prematurely rev up an immune response to two routine childhood vaccines as well as babies who are born full-term.
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Novel DNA changes linked to autism
Genetic alterations that occur in children without being inherited from the parents contribute to certain cases of autism and related developmental disorders.
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Mental fallout among recent-war veterans
Almost one in three veterans of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq receiving medical care at Veterans Affairs facilities displays mental disorders or less-severe problems that still require mental-health treatment.
- Planetary Science
Radar reveals signs of seas on Titan
The northernmost reaches of Saturn's moon Titan appear to be covered with hydrocarbon lakes or seas that are at least 10 times as large as those predicted by earlier studies.
