News
- Health & Medicine
Parasite can’t survive without its tail
The protozoan that causes African sleeping sickness can't survive in the mammalian bloodstream without its long, whiplike tail.
- Planetary Science
Propelling Evidence: Cassini finds clues to source of Saturn’s rings
Four propeller-shaped gaps in one of Saturn's main rings are the latest evidence that a shattered moon produced the planet's dazzling hoops.
- Earth
Coral Clues: Rise and fall of reefs record quakes’ effects
Shallow coral reefs around islands west of Sumatra chronicled the uplift and subsidence that resulted from the massive quakes that struck that region in 2004 and 2005.
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Awake and Learning: Memory storage begins before bedtime
Although a good night's sleep aids memory storage, learning isn't a task that just happens overnight.
- Tech
Cool Wire: Nanostructure boosts superconductor
The extraordinary performance of a prototype superconductive wire is encouraging superconductivity specialists, even though the prototype is unlikely to be mass-produced.
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Pigging Out Healthfully: Engineered pork has more omega-3s
Scientists have created pigs that sport much higher concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids in their tissues than normal pigs do.
- Health & Medicine
XXL from Too Few Zs? Skimping on sleep might cause obesity, diabetes
Widespread sleep deprivation could partly explain the current epidemics of both obesity and diabetes.
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Smarty Brains: High-IQ kids navigate notable neural shifts
Children with extremely high IQ scores display a distinctive pattern of brain development, characterized by dramatic thickening and then by marked thinning of brain tissue.
- Tech
Corralling Brownian motion
A new microscope system uses electrically controlled fluid motions to counteract Brownian motion, preventing those random jitters from driving proteins, viruses, and other tiny objects out of the field of view.
- Physics
Tiny wires trigger electric reversal
Ultrathin zinc nanowires exhibit a puzzling conductivity reversal that flies in the face of known wire behavior.
- Earth
Shafts of snow sculpted by sun
Physicists have created miniature, laboratory versions of towering snow spikes found high in the Andes Mountains.
- Animals
Wary male spiders woo lifelessly
When trying to court a cannibalistic female spider, males of a certain species play dead.
