News
- Health & Medicine
Blood vessel growth factor also does housekeeping
A growth factor that promotes blood vessel development also maintains normal blood vessel health, perhaps explaining the vascular side effects of some cancer drugs.
- Astronomy
Bloated planet
A newly discovered exoplanet is the largest and lowest-density such object yet found.
- Chemistry
Nanoparticles multitask
Magnetite nanoparticles have catalytic properties that may be useful in wastewater treatment and biomedical assays.
- Archaeology
Ancient city grew from outside in
A 6,000-year-old city in what's now northeastern Syria developed when initially independent settlements expanded and merged, unlike other nearby cities that grew from a core outward.
- Anthropology
Advantage: Starch
An enhanced ability to digest starch may have given early humans an evolutionary advantage over their ape relatives.
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Perfect pitch isn’t so perfect in many
Among people with perfect pitch, the most common error seems to be misidentifying G flat as A, the note on which orchestras traditionally tune.
- Astronomy
Major merger
Four galaxies are ramming into each other in one of the biggest cosmic collisions ever recorded.
- Health & Medicine
How platelets help cancer spread
A tumor cell protein influences blood platelets in a way that helps a cancer spread through the body.
- Earth
Laser printers can dirty the air
Some laser printers emit substantial amounts of potentially hazardous nanoscale particles.
- Health & Medicine
Aura origins show the way in epilepsy surgery
Epilepsy patients who experience multiple auras before a seizure, usually considered poor candidates for corrective brain surgery, might benefit from by a new brain scan procedure.
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Orangutans hand it to researchers
Orangutans try to communicate by gesturing when they think they're being misunderstood, much as people do when playing charades.
- Earth
Lack of oxygen stunts fish reproduction
Seasonal oxygen shortages in coastal waters, increasing in severity because of pollution, may impair fish reproduction.
