Uncategorized
- Tech
Pocket Sockets
Keenly aware of user frustration with the short-lived batteries in cell phones and other portable electronics, researchers are rushing to work out the bugs in tiny fuel-cell power plants that will be as small as batteries—but last a lot longer and be refuelable.
- Health & Medicine
Missed ZZZ’s, More Disease?
New evidence suggests that chronic lack of sleep may be as important as poor nutrition and physical inactivity in the development of chronic illnesses such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
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Your article brought to mind how this affects me. I’m a firefighter, so prone to sleep deprivation. I have noticed that when sleep patterns are repeatedly interrupted by emergency calls, I tend to be more susceptible to illness. This is anecdotal but seems to hold true for my colleagues and me. Ryan SmithForest Grove, Ore. […]
- Health & Medicine
Bacteria offer drug for organ recipients
Korean investigators have identified a compound that suppresses the immune system of animals.
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Rift of Gab: Speech insights spark statistical static
A controversial new study suggests that people use statistical regularities in language to recognize individual words but not to discern rules for word construction.
- Chemistry
Germ Fighter: Lens coating may keep contacts in eye longer
A new antibacterial coating may allow contact lenses to remain in a person's eyes for up to 3 months.
- Tech
Electronics in the Round: Mixing plastic and silicon yields form-fitting circuitry
Investigators used ordinary integrated-circuit fabrication techniques to pattern arrays of silicon-based transistors onto a flat, deformable sheet of plastic.
- Animals
Getting a Grip: How gecko toes stick
Scientists have pinned down the molecular basis of the gecko's astonishing ability to scamper up polished walls and hang from ceilings, paving the way for a new type of synthetic dry adhesive.
- Health & Medicine
You’re Feeling Sleepy . . . : Anesthetics activate brain’s sleep switch
Anesthesia's sedative effect may depend on activating sleep circuits in the brain.
- Plants
Time Capsules: Seeds sprout 120 years after going underground
An experiment designed by a botany professor to last longer than his own life has demonstrated that seeds of two common flowers still sprout and blossom despite more than a century in a bottle.
- Health & Medicine
Flower Power: Corn lily compound stops cancer in mice
A new study in mice suggests that cyclopamine, a plant derivative that causes birth defects in animals, can inhibit medulloblastoma, a brain cancer in children.
- Planetary Science
Planetary Beginnings: Data reveal Earth’s quick gestation
Two new studies confirm that Earth's core formed in a hurry—during the first 30 million years after the solar system's birth.
