News
- Health & Medicine
Experimental drug targets Alzheimer’s
A novel drug reverses some Alzheimer's-type symptoms in mice.
By Nathan Seppa - Humans
Two-fifths of Amazonian forest is at risk
The Amazon basin's forest may lose 2.1 million square kilometers by 2050 if current development trends go unabated.
By Ben Harder - Anthropology
Chimps scratch out grooming requests
Pairs of adult males in a community of wild African chimps often communicate with gestures.
By Bruce Bower - Animals
Sharpshooter threatens Tahiti by inedibility
A North American insect is menacing Tahitian ecosystems by getting itself killed and proving surprisingly toxic to its predators.
By Susan Milius - Health & Medicine
Parasite can’t survive without its tail
The protozoan that causes African sleeping sickness can't survive in the mammalian bloodstream without its long, whiplike tail.
- Planetary Science
Propelling Evidence: Cassini finds clues to source of Saturn’s rings
Four propeller-shaped gaps in one of Saturn's main rings are the latest evidence that a shattered moon produced the planet's dazzling hoops.
By Ron Cowen - Earth
Coral Clues: Rise and fall of reefs record quakes’ effects
Shallow coral reefs around islands west of Sumatra chronicled the uplift and subsidence that resulted from the massive quakes that struck that region in 2004 and 2005.
By Sid Perkins -
Awake and Learning: Memory storage begins before bedtime
Although a good night's sleep aids memory storage, learning isn't a task that just happens overnight.
- Tech
Cool Wire: Nanostructure boosts superconductor
The extraordinary performance of a prototype superconductive wire is encouraging superconductivity specialists, even though the prototype is unlikely to be mass-produced.
By Peter Weiss -
Pigging Out Healthfully: Engineered pork has more omega-3s
Scientists have created pigs that sport much higher concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids in their tissues than normal pigs do.
- Health & Medicine
XXL from Too Few Zs? Skimping on sleep might cause obesity, diabetes
Widespread sleep deprivation could partly explain the current epidemics of both obesity and diabetes.
By Ben Harder -
Smarty Brains: High-IQ kids navigate notable neural shifts
Children with extremely high IQ scores display a distinctive pattern of brain development, characterized by dramatic thickening and then by marked thinning of brain tissue.
By Bruce Bower