Uncategorized
- Animals
Scientists Say: Hagfish
Hagfish are eel-shaped fish with many traits that make them similar to long-vanished fossils. When threatened, they can pump out piles of slime.
- Animals
A fungus plus a spider toxin equals a weapon to kill mosquitoes
A new weapon could help fight mosquitoes that spread malaria. It’s an engineered fungus that infects the insects — then kills them with a spider poison.
- Agriculture
U.S. farmers still use many pesticides that are banned elsewhere
More than one in four of the pesticide used on U.S. farms in 2016 had been banned in other countries.
- Archaeology
DNA reveals clues to the Siberian ancestors of the first Americans
Researchers discovered a previously unknown population of Ice Age people who crossed the Asia-North America land bridge.
- Health & Medicine
Gut bacteria may affect how well your medicines work
Gut bacteria can chemically change the drugs people swallow. ID-ing a patient’s microbes might one day help doctors prescribe the most effective drugs.
- Health & Medicine
By the numbers: How infectious measles and other diseases spread
A number called R0 measures how contagious an infectious disease is. It helps explain why measles is so dangerous.
- Health & Medicine
Scientists Say: Obesogens
The chemicals can change how the body stores fat or how often someone feels hungry — increasing the risk for obesity.
- Physics
This device turns the kilogram’s new definition into a real mass
A new suitcase-sized device will be able to measure small masses — around 10 grams — with surprising accuracy.
- Animals
Bats are now the primary source of U.S. rabies deaths
Although human rabies is not common in the United States, it still occurs. But here dogs are no longer the likely source of this oft-lethal infection: Bats are.
- Earth
Antibiotics pollute many of the world’s rivers
A survey of 165 rivers finds unsafe levels of antibiotics at one in six sites tested. Such pollution can leave germs resistant (unharmed) by the drugs.
- Health & Medicine
Fighting spider-fear with a little Spider-Man
Many people are afraid of spiders or ants. Watching a movie clip with the critters in it might help make people more comfortable with them, a new study shows.
- Climate
Scientists Say: Eyewall
The calm center of a hurricane or other tropical cyclone is called the eye. But the worst winds and rain are around it, in the eyewall.
