News
-
Drug could be depression buster
Preliminary evidence indicates that a single dose of a drug called ketamine rapidly quells symptoms of major depression for up to 1 week in patients who don't benefit from standard antidepressant medications.
-
Sperm in frozen animals still viable years later
Sperm stored inside frozen organs or whole animals can produce healthy offspring years later.
- Astronomy
Spiral galaxy in the young universe
Astronomers have identified a galaxy that had already begun to resemble the modern Milky Way when the universe was only 3 billion years old, one-fifth of its current age.
- Anthropology
Chimps spread out their tools
Chimpanzees use stones to crack nuts in an African region far from where that behavior was thought to be relegated.
- Earth
Mercury Rising: Natural wildfires release pollutant
Fires in high-latitude forests and peaty soils of the Northern Hemisphere may loft hundreds of tons of mercury into the atmosphere each year.
-
Pathogen Preference: Infected amoebas flourish in cooling towers
Cooling towers appear to be more effective than natural waters at fostering novel bacterial species that cause illnesses in people.
- Chemistry
Lacy molecular order
A lacy honeycomb arrangement of molecules on copper suggests the possibility of creating useful nanoscale patterns on surfaces by fine-tuning intermolecular forces.
- Animals
Underage Spiders: Males show unexpected interest in young mates
Male Australian redback spiders mate readily with females too young to have external openings to their reproductive tracts, a tactic that reduces the male's risk of getting cannibalized.
-
Sweet Finding: Researchers propose candidate sour sensor
A protein on the surfaces of select tongue cells may play a pivotal role in detecting sour taste.
- Math
Fields Medals: Mathematicians win awards for geometry, physics, and probability
Fields Medals have been awarded to four mathematicians, including Grigori Perelman, who proved a famous conjecture about the shapes of higher-dimensional spheres.
- Health & Medicine
Risky Legacy: African DNA linked to prostate cancer
The high rate of prostate cancer among African American men may result in large part from a newly identified stretch of DNA passed down from their African ancestors.
- Astronomy
Enlightened: Dark matter spotted after cosmic crash
In the aftermath of a cosmic crash between two galaxies, researchers say they've detected invisible dark matter for the first time.
