News
- Anthropology
Noses didn’t need cold to evolve
Neandertals evolved big, broad noses not in response to a cold climate, as has often been argued, but in conjunction with the expansion of their upper jaws.
- Health & Medicine
Step up to denser bones
Step aerobics proved better than resistance exercises for building bone density.
- Planetary Science
Comet mission loses some focus
A camera aboard the Deep Impact spacecraft, set to fire a projectile into the icy heart of Comet Tempel-1 on July 4, is slightly out of focus.
- Earth
Balloons, condoms release likely carcinogens
Balloons and condoms that come in contact with body fluids discharge chemicals suspected of being human carcinogens.
- Health & Medicine
Company pulls pain drug from market
The Food and Drug Administration has asked Pfizer to stop selling its prescription pain medication valdecoxib (Bextra).
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Obesity may aggravate flu
At least in mice, obesity can greatly exaggerate the severity of flu by impairing the body's immune response.
- Planetary Science
A Martian haven for life?
Images taken by two Mars spacecraft suggest that a volcano on the Red Planet erupted long ago at the confluence of two riverbeds, indicating that the region had two of the prequisites for life: heat and water.
- Earth
Rice with a Human Touch: Engineered grain uses gene from people to protect against herbicides
A human gene inserted into rice enables that plant to break down an array of chemicals used to kill weeds.
- Animals
Funny Walks: Cranes bob, bob, bob along when hunting
The jerky neck motions of a whooping crane may help it spot food by keeping its head motionless about half the time.
- Physics
Built for Speed: Novel transistor design spurns limits
The novel design of what's now the world's fastest transistor opens the possibility of even speedier devices that could operate as fast as a trillion cycles per second.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Primitive: Old star sheds light on early stellar formation
Astronomers have found one of the most chemically primitive stars known, dating to just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
- Anthropology
Stone Age Cutups: Deathly rituals emerge at Neandertal site
A new analysis of 130,000-year-old fossils found in a Croatian cave a century ago suggests that Neandertals ritually cut up corpses of their comrades and perhaps engaged in cannibalism.
