Uncategorized
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A.M. and P.M. Clocks: Fruit fly brain has double timekeepers
Two research teams have pinpointed one group of fly-brain neurons keeping time for morning activity and a different neuron group performing the same function for evening activity.
- Chemistry
Breakdown: How Three Chemists Took the Prize
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists for their discovery of how cells mark proteins for destruction with a molecular tag called ubiquitin, otherwise known as the kiss of death.
- Planetary Science
Mars Rovers: New evidence of past water
Twin rovers on opposite sides of the Red Planet have found additional evidence that liquid water once flowed there.
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Trash to Treasure: Junk DNA influences eggs, early embryos
A type of DNA once thought to be little more than genetic clutter may play a role in gene expression in mammalian eggs and newly formed embryos.
- Math
A Catalog of Random Bits
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
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Verbal sighting in brains of the blind
Brain areas typically responsible for visual processing instead contribute to verbal skills in blind people.
- Planetary Science
Martian water everywhere
Combining data taken from two craft orbiting Mars with images and spectra collected by one of the Mars rovers, a scientist has found evidence that a body of water greater in area than all the Great Lakes combined once covered the Red Planet.
- Physics
To freeze this liquid, add heat
A wrong-headed mixture of liquid starch, water, and a solvent freezes when heated.
- Earth
Extra rainfall may stem warming in Midwest
Increased precipitation in parts of the Midwest may reduce the temperature increases expected to occur in the next few decades as a result of global warming.
- Health & Medicine
Drug-resistant staph causes more pneumonia
A recently discovered variant of Staphylococcus aureus that is resistant to some antibiotics became a major cause of severe pneumonia among people who caught the flu last winter.
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New bacteria linked to vaginal infections
Several newly described bacteria appear to share much of the responsibility for causing a common infection in women.
- Health & Medicine
Kids’ vaccine guards adults too, for now
Serious infections caused by pneumococcus have decreased in both children and adults since the introduction of a childhood vaccine against seven strains of the bacterium, but other pneumococcus strains are now becoming more prevalent among adults with HIV.
