Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Heartening Responses: Depression drugs may aid survival after heart attack
Depressed patients recovering from heart attacks receive big heart-health benefits by taking prescribed doses of the antidepressant drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
- Plants
Honey, We Shrank the Snow Lotus: Picking big plants reduces species’ height
Years of harvesting the larger plants of a Himalayan wildflower used in traditional medicines may be driving the evolution of a stubbier plant form.
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Your article suggests that the change is an evolutionary process. However, this and the other examples given are all more selective breeding than natural selection. In this case, organisms with undesirable characteristics (smaller size) are overrepresented during reproduction as the result of removing the larger organisms from the breeding population. Robert ArdreyPrescott, Ariz. The tale […]
- Astronomy
Core Finding: Latest, oddest planet hints at how orbs form
A newly discovered planet beyond the solar system has the most massive core of any planet known.
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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.
- Planetary Science
A Grand Slam
A 372-kilogram copper projectile released from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft successfully slammed into Comet Tempel 1 on July 4, producing some heavenly fireworks.
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Why slam a copper impactor into Comet Tempel 1? Wouldn’t copper vapor contaminate the spray? Why not a high-temperature ceramic? P.M. deLaubenfelsCorvallis, Ore. According to Casey Lisse of the Deep Impact team, copper was chosen because its density put a lot of mass into a small package, its relative softness reduced bounce at impact, and […]
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- 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.
- 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.
- Astronomy
Rumblings from a dead star
The burned-out cinder left behind when a massive Milky Way star exploded recently underwent its own outburst.
- 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.
