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| <<< 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | >>> | 15.04.2009
Primate's Progress: Macaque genome is usefully different
 A group of 35 labs this week unveiled a draft of the genome for the rhesus macaque, the most widely used laboratory primate and a cousin to people. "The big question here is, 'What makes us human?'" says Richard A. Gibbs of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who led the DNA-sequencing project...
more info>>> | 15.04.2009
Bug versus Bug: Insect virus makes a viable flu vaccine
A new influenza vaccine churned out by caterpillar cells prevents the flu, researchers say. The advance might eventually revolutionize the manufacture of flu vaccine, now produced in chicken eggs in a long, cumbersome process prone to contamination and other failures...
more info>>> | 01.04.2009
Too Few Jaws: Shark declines let rays overgraze scallops
 That's the conclusion of researchers led by the late Ransom Myers of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who died this week. Combining census surveys from the past 35 years, Myers' team found shrinking populations of big sharks and shellfish and increasing numbers of smaller sharks and rays...
more info>>> | 01.04.2009
Is Your Phone Out of Juice? Biological fuel cell turns drinks into power
 In fuel cells, chemical reactions generate electrical currents. The process usually relies on precious metals, such as platinum, acting as catalysts. In living cells, enzymes perform a similar job, breaking down sugars to extract electrons and produce energy...
more info>>> | 20.03.2009
Warming Up to Criticality: Quantum change, one bubble at a time
 Physicists have had their first look at how matter transitions into an exotic state known as a Bose-Einstein condensate-an ultracold fluid that displays quantum behavior. The atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate share a collective quantum persona that has wave properties at macroscopic scales and can show patterns of interference, just as waves on a pond do. Because the behavior of condensates theoretically can be tuned to simulate the quantum properties of other states of matter, physicists expect to use the condensates to investigate poorly understood phenomena such as high-temperature superconductivity...
more info>>> | 22.02.2009
Chimpanzee Stone Age: Finds in Africa rock prehistory of tools
 Most of the more than 200 stone artifacts found at three sites in Taï National Park, Ivory Coast, were used by prehistoric chimps to crack open nuts, say archaeologist Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary in Alberta and his colleagues. The animals placed nuts on the flat surface of one rock and smashed the tough shells with another rock...
more info>>> | 22.02.2009
Stroke of Good Fortune: A wealth of data from petrified lightning
 Worldwide, lightning flashes occur about 65 times per second. Each bolt releases as much energy as is stored in a quarter-ton of TNT. The flash heats the air to about 30,000°C, about five times the temperature of the surface of the sun. If that electrical discharge strikes sandy ground, it can melt and then fuse sand and other materials into masses of glass called fulgurites, says Rafael Navarro-González, a geochemist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. Those masses take their name from fulgur, the Latin word for lightning.
more info>>> | 30.01.2009
Ancient Glider: Dinosaur took to the air in biplane style
 Four years ago, paleontologists described a species of feathered dinosaur from China that they named Microraptor gui (SN: 1/25/03, p. 51: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030125/fob1.asp). A series of long feathers on the creature's legs and feet led those scientists to speculate that the dinosaur splayed its hind limbs to create an extra, hind set of wings. Other researchers cast doubt on that idea, noting that hip joints permitting such flexibility aren't found in any related dinosaur...
more info>>> | 30.01.2009
Perchance to Hibernate
 Biologists have been intrigued for decades about how animals go dormant during the winter and survive physiological conditions that would kill them at other times of the year. Hibernators spend most of the winter in torpor, a state of self-induced reduction in body temperature and metabolic rate. Even some species that don't contend with harsh winters by hunkering down for months at a stretch, such as mice, enter torpor daily when food is in limited supply and temperatures are chilly. Many small birds spend nights year-round in torpor...
more info>>> | 22.01.2009
Golden Eggs: Engineered hens lay drugs
Scottish scientists have genetically engineered hens that can not only produce useful drugs in their eggs but also reliably pass on this characteristic to new generations of chickens. Successfully combining these two traits represents a first for researchers aiming to transform animals into living drug factories, the scientists say...
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