All Stories by Ben Harder
- Earth
Extracting Estrogens: Modern treatment plants strip hormone from sewage
New research helps explain why state-of-the-art sewage treatment facilities are more effective than conventional plants at removing certain sex hormones from sludge.
- Astronomy
Taking the Crab’s pulse
Simultaneous recordings of a pulsar's radio emissions and its visible beam shed new light on the seemingly chaotic variations in the intensities of those emissions.
- Health & Medicine
Promising drug cuts tumor metabolism
Early safety trials of an experimental medicine suggest that it could be used for treating several serious cancers.
- Health & Medicine
Immune test predicts tolerance for radiation
A new blood test can foretell which cancer patients are likely to suffer serious delayed side effects from radiation therapy.
- Health & Medicine
Genes linked to colon cancer take sides
Cancers on opposite sides of the colon are genetically distinct and should be studied and treated as separate entities.
- Health & Medicine
Herbal therapy may carry cancer danger
An herbal extract that some women use to relieve symptoms of menopause increases the likelihood in mice with breast cancer that the disease will spread.
- Earth
Catch Zero
It generally has taken less than a generation for modern, industrial-scale fishing, once deployed in a new plot of ocean, to exhaust the vast majority of the sea’s edible bounty and leave behind decimated ecosystems and depleted economic opportunities.
- Health & Medicine
Split Ends: Cancers follow shrinkage of chromosomes’ tips
Genetic tabs called telomeres, which normally protect the ends of chromosomes, become undersized in many tissues that later turn cancerous, new studies in people show.
- Health & Medicine
Viral protein could help liver therapy
Researchers have developed a method of delivering gene therapies to targeted cells that makes use of viral proteins rather than whole virus particles.
- Earth
More Than a Miner Problem: Asbestos exposure is prevalent in mining community
A new study of the residents of Libby, Mont., confirms that even people who don't work with asbestos can have lung abnormalities caused by the mineral.
- Earth
Antimosquito coils release toxic fumes
Researchers have measured several pollutants in smoke emitted from so-called mosquito coils, which people burn at night to fend off insects.
- Earth
Suspended Drugs: Antibiotics fed to animals drift in air
Borne on dust floating in and around farm buildings, antibiotics given to animals may later be inhaled by people—with possibly detrimental health effects.
