News
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Age Becomes Her: Male chimpanzees favor old females as mates
Male chimpanzees in Uganda prefer to mate with older females, a possible sign of males' need to identify successful mothers in a promiscuous mating system.
- Physics
Super Silicon: Top semiconductor turns into a superconductor
A heavy dose of boron transforms silicon, the superhero material of electronics, into a superconductor.
- Health & Medicine
Kidney Progress: Drug slows cyst growth
The trial drug roscovitine has been shown to reverse polycystic kidney disease in mice.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Pops: Nearby galaxy is hotbed of supernova formation
Large galaxies usually have no more than three supernovas blow up in a century, but the nearby galaxy NGC 1316 has had two such explosions within the past 5 months and four in the past 26 years.
- Animals
Fighting Styles: Gene gives flies his, her conflict moves
Switching forms of one gene can make a male fruit fly fight like a girl, and vice versa.
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Toxin Buster: New technique makes cottonseeds edible
Scientists have engineered cotton plants that produce seeds missing a toxic compound that had previously made them inedible.
- Tech
Ancients made nanotech hair dye
A hair-darkening paste invented thousands of years ago forms lead-and-sulfur nanocrystals remarkably similar to those made in today's nanotechnology labs.
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Low body heat lengthens mouse lives
Mice genetically engineered to have slightly lower-than-normal body temperatures lived significantly longer than mice with normal body temperatures.
- Physics
Heavy finding
Physicists have discovered never-before-seen subatomic particles related to protons and neutrons but laden with exotic, heavy subparticles called bottom quarks.
- Health & Medicine
Bug be gone
An experimental device that combines a special comb with a forceful air blower kills head lice and their nits.
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Jet lag might hasten death in elderly
Mimicking jet lag in old mice brought on an early death in the animals.
- Animals
Tough policing deters cheating in insects
In insect societies that have tough police, it's coercion, rather than kinship, that's preventing crime.
