News
- Health & Medicine
Guilt by Association: Whole-genome scans yield disease clues
In a sweeping demonstration of the power of the new biology, researchers have linked two dozen genetic variations to six major diseases.
- Health & Medicine
Animal-to-human diseases could be right at home
A new map of where SARS or Ebola might erupt next highlights North America and Western Europe as likely sources.
- Health & Medicine
Beware the bats
Fruit bats in Bangladesh regularly trigger small outbreaks of Nipah virus, a measleslike pathogen that causes brain inflammation and death.
- Health & Medicine
Phages break up plaques
Phages, viruses that infect bacteria, dissolve plaques in the brains of mice with an Alzheimer's-like disease.
- Health & Medicine
Sticky treatment for staph infections
Honey from New Zealand gums up bacteria, offering a potential new means of combating difficult-to-treat infections.
- Astronomy
Crash will determine solar system’s fate
The solar system already lies in the suburbs of the Milky Way, but the sun and its planets will be yanked even farther away about 5 billion years from now.
- Earth
Guidelines for wind farms
National policies to maximize the benefits of wind farms while lessening their environmental impacts may be needed.
- Physics
Magnetic Logic: Electron spins could do cool calculations
Novel circuits use electrons as tiny bar magnets to process information.
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Take a Number: Kids show math insights without instruction
Kindergartners can solve relatively complex addition and subtraction problems if allowed to use their intuitive grasp of approximate quantities rather than being required to calculate exact solutions.
- Chemistry
Packaging Peril: Chemicals in food wrapping turn toxic
Chemicals that prevent grease from seeping through food packaging can transform into a suspected carcinogen.
- Health & Medicine
Visualizing Cancer: Images of tumors can detect gene expression
Subtle features in X-ray images of tumors let radiologists infer which genes are active in the cancerous growth.
- Animals
Pothole Pals: Ants pave roads for fellow raiders
By throwing their bodies into tiny potholes on rough trails, army ants enable their comrade to race over them, improving the colony's overall foraging success.
