Uncategorized
- Chemistry
Rooting for new antimicrobial drugs
A compound from a tree found throughout tropical Africa could prove useful as a topical antifungal medication.
- Physics
Electron spins pass imposing frontier
Electron spins crossed from one semiconductor to another with apparent ease and little or no mussing of their direction, suggesting that sandwiches of materials common in microcircuits are no obstacle to creating spin-information channels in future circuits.
- Agriculture
Sprawling over croplands
Satellite imagery indicates that sprawling urban development has been disproportionately gobbling up those lands best able to support crops.
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Glacial warming’s pollutant threat
Some Arctic wildlife are being exposed to high amounts of toxic wastes as glacial melting releases pollutants that had been buried in ice for decades.
- Archaeology
Could the Anasazi have stayed?
New computer simulations of the changing environmental conditions around one of the Anasazi cultural centers in the first part of the last millennium suggest that drought wasn't the only factor behind a sudden collapse of the civilization.
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19115
This article comments that factors other than drought, such as disease, may have been at work in accounting for the disappearance of some Anasazi groups. If it is found that disease was a major factor, it would be unprecedented. As far as has been determined, the Anasazi didn’t experience exotic, culture-busting pathogens until Columbus made […]
- Earth
Chinese records show typhoon cycles
Historical records compiled by local governments along China's southeastern coast during the past 1,000 years suggest that there's a 50-year cycle in the annual number of typhoons that strike the area.
- Earth
Cave formations yield seismic clues
Analyses of toppled stalagmites and other fallen rock formations in two Israeli caves may provide hints about the rate of ancient earthquakes in the area.
- Animals
Many fish run on empty
Many fish eat all the time, while some others spend their days going from brief feast to lengthy famine.
- Health & Medicine
Protein flags colon, prostate cancers
A compound first identified as a possible culprit in Huntington's disease may be an indicator of cancers of the prostate gland and colon.
- Animals
Singing frog in China evokes whales, primates
A frog in China warbles and flutes with such versatility that its high-pitched calls sound like those of birds or whales.
- Astronomy
Getting a Clear View
Outfitted with a mirror that flexes several hundred times a second to compensate for the blurring induced by Earth’s atmosphere, one of the world’s sharpest telescopes just got a whole lot sharper.
