Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Early school starts can turn teens into ‘zombies’
Teens face serious consequences when they don’t get enough sleep. Yet most school start times don’t allow a full night’s rest, doctors say. The result: Too many students become ‘walking zombies’.
- Animals
Chef puts eco-bullies on the menu
Some immigrant species can become a nuisance, eating up or displacing the natives. Often people find little incentive to catch and remove the newcomers — unless they find them too yummy to pass up.
- Animals
A fish out of water — walks and morphs
When this modern ‘walking’ fish was raised on land, its body changed. How it adapted resembles some prehistoric fish. These alterations hint at evolutionary changes that may have made life on land possible.
- Planets
Asteroids: A stepping stone to Mars?
NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission, designed to capture and move an asteroid, may be a step toward getting to Mars. But not everyone agrees it's the right step.
- Brain
Mistakes: A key to learning
This man uses a robotic arm to move a cursor across a computer screen. The screen blocks his view of his hand and arm. This focuses his attention on any errors he makes as he tries to move a cursor to a target location.
- Tech
Soaking up oil spills — with cotton
Natural, low-grade cotton could help clean up oil spills better than synthetic materials, a new study finds. And unlike synthetics, cotton breaks down naturally.
- Tech
Plants ‘listen’ for danger
Scientists used lasers to show that plants can “hear” insect pests. Those leafy plants then mount a chemical attack in response to the bug’s chewing sounds — but not toward harmless noises such as a gentle breeze or a bug’s mating call.
- Brain
Learning rewires the brain
Brain cells actually change shape as we learn. It’s one way we cement new knowledge. And much of the action happens as we sleep.
- Health & Medicine
Starchy foods may cut meaty risks
Eating red meat can increase the risk of certain types of cancer. But scientists have discovered that eating potatoes and other foods containing 'resistant' starch can help limit those risks.
- Plants
Saving the banana
A number of diseases threaten the world’s most popular fruit. Scientists are working to fight these blights. But if they don’t succeed, the sweet banana that’s a breakfast staple could disappear.
- Chemistry
New nano-cages snag and hold gases
Molecular traps have been developed to snag and hold noble gases, such as krypton, xenon and radon. These atoms tend to resist arrest. But the new traps might grab onto polluting gases so that they can be recycled for later beneficial uses.
- Health & Medicine
Ebola emerges in the Congo
The Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) is where the Ebola virus was first discovered in 1976. This nation has just been hit again by the disease. Scientists suspect this is a new and independent outbreak — not a spread of the epidemic ravaging West Africa.
