Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Sex, smell and appetite
A study of sexual dysfunction in mutated mice may help explain the connection between smell and appetite.
- Health & Medicine
Hunger hormone gone awry?
People with an inherited form of obesity caused by constant hunger pangs have higher-than-normal blood concentrations of ghrelin, a hormone believed to boost appetite.
- Physics
Twice-charmed particles spotted?
Exotic cousins of protons and neutrons known as doubly-charmed baryons may have made their laboratory debut.
- Agriculture
Killer bees boost coffee yields
Even self-pollinating coffee plants benefit substantially from visits by insect pollinators.
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Caregivers take heartfelt hit
Older persons experience elevated systolic blood pressure for at least 1 year after a spouse with Alzheimer's disease enters a nursing-care facility or dies.
- Materials Science
Spring in your step? The forces in cartilage
Researchers are uncovering the role of molecular forces in cartilage's ability to resist compression.
- Health & Medicine
Appetite-suppressing drug burns fat, too
An experimental drug seems to assail obesity through dual biological actions.
- Physics
Double or Nothing
The hunt for a rare, hypothetical nuclear transformation known as neutrinoless double-beta decay may answer one of the most urgent questions in physics today: How much do elementary particles called neutrinos weigh?
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Aphids with Attitude
A few aphid species that live socially in groups raise their own armies of teenage female clones.
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From the July 2, 1932, issue
OUR FRIEND THE BAT With the coming of warm summer weather, and the arrival in number of insects to eat, bats are becoming more noticeable as they make their noiseless nightly patrols. Because of their nocturnal, and therefore mysterious, habits and because of their preference for homes in caves and dark holes, our ancestors came […]
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Ketchup’s Shear Mystery
Shifting suddenly from a thick paste to a runny liquid when shaken or jarred, ketchup is one of many complex fluids that share a property called “shear thinning.” A NASA Web page highlights an upcoming space experiment aimed at elucidating the basic physics of these fluids. Go to: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/07jun_elastic_fluids.htm
- Math
Dangerous Problems
Some mathematical problems are easy to describe but turn out to be notoriously difficult to solve. Nonetheless, despite their reputed difficulty and repeated warnings from those who had failed to solve them in the past, these infamous problems continue to lure mathematicians into hours, days, and even years of futile labor. Billiard-ball trajectory after 15 […]
