News
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Burden of Abuse: Violent partners take mental toll on women
Physical abuse at the hands of their husbands or live-in male partners contributes substantially to major depression and other disorders among women.
By Bruce Bower - Health & Medicine
Prescription stimulants are big on campus
Nearly 1 in 10 students at a New England college admits to using prescription stimulants without authorization.
By Nathan Seppa - Animals
True-pal lizards may show odd gene
Colorful lizards in California may offer an example of a long-sought evolutionary factor called greenbeard genes, a possible explanation for altruism.
By Susan Milius - Health & Medicine
Hookworms hitched rides with nomads
Horseback-riding herders known as Scythians once traveled far and wide across Eurasia, and their remains contain the parasites to prove it.
By Ben Harder - Health & Medicine
Many people don’t see well
Vision screening of a broad sample of people in the United States ages 12 and older finds that 6.4 percent of them have substandard vision.
By Nathan Seppa - Planetary Science
The sands of Titan
Although the surface of Saturn's moon Titan is cold enough to freeze methane, it has sand dunes like those in the Arabian Desert, according to radar images taken by the Cassini spacecraft.
By Ron Cowen - Physics
A well-spun egg also jumps
Physicists have demonstrated that spinning a hard-boiled egg horizontally makes it jump into the air.
By Peter Weiss - Chemistry
Leaking lead
A disinfectant used by some U.S. water utilities dissolves lead in laboratory experiments.
- Tech
Directing tubular traffic
Researchers have shown that they can steer individual protein tubes along tiny channels of a glass chip.
- Humans
Indy’s Best: Young scientists cross the finish line
High school students from 47 countries gathered in Indianapolis last week to compete for scholarships and other prizes in the 2006 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
By Emily Sohn -
Eye for Growth: New protein prompts optic nerve regrowth
A protein recently isolated from white blood cells could offer a new way to repair nerve cells damaged by injury or disease.
- Animals
Jay Watch: Birds get sneakier when spies lurk
A scrub jay storing food takes note of any other jay that watches it and later defends the hoard accordingly.
By Susan Milius