News
- Humans
A Thirst for Meat: Changes in diet, rising population may strain China’s water supply
Rapid industrialization, an increase in population, and a growing dietary preference for meat in China are straining the country's water resources to the point where food imports probably will be needed to meet demand in coming decades.
- Physics
Dusty Fireball: Can lab-made blob explain ball lightning?
Artificial cousins of ball lightning contain microscopic particles, just like a model says they should. With video.
- Health & Medicine
Phoenix Heart: Replacing a heart’s cells could ease transplants
Scientists removed all the cells from a dead rat heart, injected new heart cells, and produced a beating heart, paving the way for eventually growing organs for transplantation in humans.
- Health & Medicine
Getting the Red Out: Drug improves kids’ psoriasis symptoms
The rheumatoid arthritis drug etanercept clears up psoriasis in children and may become the first systemic medication for the ailment in youngsters.
- Earth
Bird’s-eye view of Antarctic ice loss
Satellite images of Antarctica between 1992 and 2006 indicate that the continent was losing ice much faster at the end of that period than it was a decade before.
- Health & Medicine
HIV variant might help vaccine search
Scientists have discovered an unusual HIV protein in a Kenyan woman that makes the virus vulnerable to antibodies.
- Earth
Switchgrass may yield biofuel bounty
Making ethanol from switchgrass yielded more than 5 times more energy than needed to grow the crops in a large-scale farming trial.
- Health & Medicine
Sleep disruption and glucose processing
Shallow sleep can depress the body's ability to process glucose efficiently.
- Animals
Butterfly’s clock linked to compass
The most detailed look yet at the monarch butterfly's daily rhythm keeper suggests it's closer to ancient forms than to the fruit fly's or mouse's inner clock.
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- Health & Medicine
Night lights may foster cancer
Regularly working through the night appears to come at a steep cost—a heightened risk of cancer.
- Humans
Transport emissions sizable, and rising
Almost one-sixth of the carbon dioxide produced by human activity since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution resulted from the transport of goods and people—an emissions fraction that's increasing by the year.
