Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Africa faces new meningitis threat
A vaccine-resistant and previously rare strain of deadly bacteria caused an epidemic of meningitis last year in western Africa and seems to have disseminated around the world.
- Health & Medicine
Vaccine didn’t cause heart deaths
Fatal heart attacks that recently struck two people after they were vaccinated against smallpox were probably unfortunate coincidences, not adverse consequences of vaccination.
- Physics
Fusion device crosses threshold
By sparking thermonuclear reactions, a machine called Z has joined the big leagues among potential technologies for producing power from controlled nuclear fusion.
- Astronomy
Echoes of a stellar outburst
Light from the outburst of a star has revealed its dusty surroundings.
- Health & Medicine
Shots stop allergic reactions to venom
An immune therapy prevents allergic reactions to the sting of the jack jumper ant, a pest common to Australia.
- Physics
Light rambles through room-temperature ruby
Researchers have dramatically slowed light within a solid at room temperature.
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Words Get in the Way
New studies explore people's tendency to have trouble recalling faces or other hard-to-describe perceptions after giving verbal accounts of them, with an eye toward improving police interviewing techniques with crime eyewitnesses.
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Happy Anniversary
In the 50 years since the discovery of DNA's double helix structure, scientists have developed striking new ways to visualize the molecule.
- Humans
From the April 15, 1933, issue
NARCISSI MERIT RECOGNITION AS PROPER EASTER FLOWERS Easter has always been a festival of flowers. Indeed, one of the reasons why the early missionary church found it comparatively easy to get its converts to adopt this holy day was because most of them already had a holiday at the same season–a celebration of the returning […]
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Left-Handed DNA
DNA strands in living cells normally have a right-hand twist–just like a standard wood or metal screw. The Left-Handed DNA Hall of Fame, maintained by Tom Schneider of the Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology at the National Institutes of Health, offers an amusing compendium of examples in which illustrators have unwittingly depicted DNA incorrectly […]
- Math
Prime conjecture verified to new heights
Computations show that all even integers up to 4 x 1014 can be written as the sum of two prime numbers, lending support to the Goldbach conjecture.
- Astronomy
Comet LINEAR: Breaking up isn’t hard to do
New images reveal that Comet LINEAR, which passed near the sun late last month, has broken into at least 10 fragments.
