Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
The Seeds of Malaria
By studying the molecular footprints of evolution in parasites and human hosts, geneticists are casting light on when and how malaria became the menace it is.
- Math
Absolutely Abnormal
Identifying the normal (or even the abnormal) in mathematics can pose serious difficulties. In 1909, mathematician Émile Borel (1871–1956) introduced the concept of normality as one way to characterize the resemblance between the digits of a mathematical constant such as pi (the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter) and a sequence of random […]
- Health & Medicine
Protein may be target for Crohn’s therapy
A protein called macrophage migration inhibitory factor, or MIF, may play a role in Crohn's disease, a painful gut ailment.
- Tech
Exploding wires open sharp X-ray eye
Using exploding wires to make low-energy X-rays, a novel, high-resolution camera snaps X-ray pictures of millimeter-scale or larger objects—such as full insects—in which features only micrometers across show up throughout the image.
- Earth
Researchers confirm sea change in oceans
A new analysis of ancient seawater shows that the ocean's chemistry has fluctuated over the last half-billion years.
- Health & Medicine
Attacking Alzheimer’s
Some researchers now suggest that the so-called amyloid hypothesis is overstated and that other entities, including tau tangles, are as important as beta-amyloid in Alzheimer's disease.
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19040
I enjoyed your timely article. Conspicuously absent, however, was any mention of the possibility that the disease is a vascular disorder with neurodegenerative consequences, rather than the other way around. The involvement of several dozen risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease that all reduce or impair cerebral perfusion in the Alzheimer’s brain adds ammunition to this […]
- Animals
Magnetic field tells nightingales to binge
Young birds that have never migrated before may take a cue from the magnetic field to fatten up before trying to fly over the Sahara.
- Health & Medicine
Even high-normal blood pressure is too high
Blood pressure at the high end of what is defined as the normal range is closer to "high" than to "normal" in terms of risk of associated heart disease.
- Astronomy
X-ray study: Energy from a black hole?
Astronomers claim that for the first time, they've observed energy extracted from a black hole, or more precisely, from the tornadolike swirl of surrounding space that a spinning black hole drags along with it.
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Disabilities develop as family affair
A long-term study uncovered family factors that influence the mental development of children with biologically based disabilities, as well as evidence of increasing stress among parents as their kids with disabilities approach adolescence.
- Health & Medicine
Puffer Fish Genomes Swim into View
The tightly packed genomes of two puffer fish species have been deciphered.
