News
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Same Difference: Twins’ gene regulation isn’t identical
As identical twins go through life, environmental influences differently affect which genes are turned on and which are switched off.
- Health & Medicine
Epilepsy surgery stands test of time
Brain surgery for people with severe epilepsy keeps many of these patients free of seizures for decades.
By Nathan Seppa - Animals
More junk makes for better dads
A new analysis links dutiful fatherhood in prairie voles to a stretch of DNA once dismissed as meaningless.
By Susan Milius - Astronomy
Rumblings from a dead star
The burned-out cinder left behind when a massive Milky Way star exploded recently underwent its own outburst.
By Ron Cowen - Tech
A nanoprinter for cheaper diagnostics
Using strands of DNA as movable type, scientists have created a miniaturized printing technique for mass-producing medical diagnostic chips.
- Health & Medicine
Stem cell shift may lead to infections, leukemia
Aging of blood-producing stem cells could be responsible for the relatively high incidence of infections and myeloid leukemia in the elderly.
- Animals
He Clones, She Clones: Dad, mom ants as different species
In the little fire ant, males and queens clone themselves, the closest science has gotten to declaring males and females as separate species.
By Susan Milius -
Mother Knows Worst: Abusive parenting spans generations in monkeys
Many female rhesus monkeys who were abused as infants by their mothers do the same to their own infants, raising the prospect of using these animals as a model for human child abuse.
By Bruce Bower - Planetary Science
Pebbles from Heaven: Tracking planets in the making
Recording radio waves from the region around a young star, astronomers have for the first time documented the making pebbles, a key step in the rocky road to planethood.
By Ron Cowen - Earth
Bacteria Ride the Tide: Moon’s phases predict water quality at beaches
At many ocean beaches, full and new moons coincide with the greatest concentrations of bacteria in the water.
By Ben Harder -
Muscle Men: Lab-grown cells mirror source’s characteristics
Researchers studying muscle cells maintained in petri dishes burn sugar and fat with the same efficiency as do the people from whom the cells are isolated.
- Chemistry
Inside a melting crystal
A model crystal made of water-saturated polymer spheres shows that small defects in a crystal can cause it to melt from the inside out.