News
- Earth
Arctic Foulers: Foraging seabirds carry contaminants home
When seabirds go out looking for food, they can bring home traces of pollutants that build up around their nesting colonies.
- Earth
Power-laden winds sweep North America
There's more than enough wind power to satisfy the United States' energy requirements, a new analysis of weather data suggests.
- Health & Medicine
Brain Power: Stem cells put a check on nerve disorders
Adult neural stem cells protect the brain against repeated episodes of inflammation in disorders such as multiple sclerosis by killing inflammatory immune cells.
- Health & Medicine
Cancer Switch: Good gene is shut off in various malignancies
A gene called Reprimo is shut down in several cancers but rarely in healthy cells.
- Health & Medicine
Codes for Killers: Knowledge of microbes could lead to cures
Scientists have deciphered the DNA of the parasites responsible for African sleeping sickness, Chagas' disease, and leishmaniasis.
- Tech
Wiring up molecules
Minuscule gaps of controlled sizes in gold microwires may serve as test sites for probing properties of specks of material as small as a single molecule and as a basis for novel sensors and circuit components.
-
Hypnosis subdues the visual brain
Hypnotic suggestions to perceive written words as gibberish depress activity in brain areas responsible for vision, possibly reflecting a hypnosis-induced decline in attention paid to visual objects.
- Animals
Is eyeless sea creature fishing with a red light?
Researchers off the coast of California have captured three deep-water siphonophores, relatives of jellyfish, and observed in the lab that the creatures twitch little red lights that could be lures for fish.
- Health & Medicine
Vaccines against Marburg and Ebola viruses advance
Two new vaccines protect against the lethal Ebola and Marburg viruses, tests in monkeys show.
- Health & Medicine
Cells in heart can regenerate dead tissue
Stem cells in heart tissue that has survived a heart attack can be prodded to regenerate dead portions of the injured organ.
-
Bacterial tresses conduct electricity
New research suggests that several species of Geobacter bacteria use hairlike structures known as pili to move electrons.
- Earth
Growth Slumps: Melting permafrost shapes Alaskan lakes
A new model suggests that some fast-growing, egg-shaped lakes in Alaska expand when their permafrost banks melt and slump in tiny landslides.
