News
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Faces elicit strong emotions in autism
Children with autism avoid eye contact because they experience uncomfortably intense emotional reactions when looking at faces.
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Infectious Evolution: Ancient virus hit apes, not our ancestors, in the genes
A potentially deadly infection wormed its way into the DNA of ancestral chimpanzees and gorillas between 4 million and 3 million years ago, thus altering the evolution of these African apes while keeping clear of human ancestors on that same continent.
- Planetary Science
Martian Landscaping: Spacecraft eyes evidence of a frozen sea
After analyzing images taken by the orbiting Mars Express spacecraft, researchers reported that a flat region near the Red Planet's equator holds a frozen ocean that was once the size of the North Sea.
- Animals
Shortcut to Big Heart: Pythons build cardiac muscle in record time
A Burmese python can boost its cardiac fitness—by bulking up its heart muscle 40 percent in two days—just by eating.
- Astronomy
Nursery Pictures: Astronomers glimpse primordial clustering
Astronomers have found the earliest traces of galaxy clustering, from a period just 1 billion years after the birth of the universe.
- Earth
Warm Spell: Arctic algae record shift in climate
Analyses of sediment samples taken from remote arctic lakes indicate that the climate across large swaths of the Northern Hemisphere has been warming for many decades.
- Health & Medicine
Measuring HIV’s Cost: Treatment adds years, but many still miss out
Medical care for people infected with HIV has already saved about 2 million years of life in the United States, but more than 200,000 HIV-infected Americans are not benefiting from drugs that could extend their lives.
- Physics
Brutal Bubbles: Collapsing orbs rip apart atoms
Spikes of heat and pressure in sonoluminescence caused by the implosions of light-emitting bubbles in liquids can strip atoms of electrons.
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Cytoplasm affects embryonic development
The DNA in a fertilized egg's mitochondria may play a pivotal role in the organism's growth.
- Health & Medicine
Protein may aid stroke recovery
Tests in mice have shown that erythropoietin, a red blood cell growth factor, can reverse brain damage caused by strokes.
- Astronomy
Hole power
New computer simulations and observations are adding to the evidence that supermassive black holes control the growth of the galaxies they inhabit, wielding an influence far beyond their gravitational grasp.
- Archaeology
Pottery points to ‘mother culture’
The Olmec, a society that more than 3,000 years ago inhabited what is now Mexico's Gulf Coast, acted as a mother culture for communities located hundreds of miles away, according to a chemical analysis of pottery remains and local clays from ancient population sites in the area.
