When radiochemist Jennifer Shusterman and her colleagues got the first results of their experiment, no one expected what they saw: Atoms of a weird version of the element zirconium had enthusiastically absorbed neutrons. “People were quite surprised and we had lots of discussions,” says Shusterman, of Hunter College of the City University of New York. […]
It’s another raw day in St. Petersburg, Russia, but the man striding down the University Embankment along the Neva River isn’t pondering how the icy wind off the Gulf of Finland chills his bones or whether Emperor Alexander II’s reforms will increase salaries for professors like him. Instead, Dmitrii Mendeleev is imagining how he could […]
After Colorado voted to legalize marijuana in 2012, doctors in Denver noticed a surprising trend. Most people who visited the emergency room for cannabis-related complaints had smoked the drug. But those who ingested the drug were more likely to suffer more severe effects, including psychiatric symptoms and heart problems. Edibles — marijuana-laced products such as […]
NEW ORLEANS — For couples who have suffered repeated miscarriages, it may be useful to scrutinize the man’s reproductive health as closely as the woman’s. Some miscarriages may be linked to abnormalities in semen, a study finds. Researchers analyzed semen from 49 men whose partners had lost three or more consecutive pregnancies before the 20-week […]
Dumping literal tons of hot volcanic material down a lab flume may finally have revealed how searing mixtures of hot gas and rock travel so far from volcanic eruptions. These pyroclastic flows can travel tens to hundreds of kilometers over rough terrain and even uphill (SN: 7/7/18, p. 32). Despite being made of gritty volcanic […]
ORLANDO — A common food additive may make it more difficult to fight the flu. Vaccinated mice that got food containing the additive, tert-butylhydroquinone (tBHQ), took three days longer to recover from the flu than mice that ate tBHQ-free food. The unpublished result suggests the common additive may make flu vaccines less effective, toxicologist Robert […]
WASHINGTON — The tale of the first horseback riders may be written on the bones of the ancient Yamnaya people. Five excavated skeletons dated to about 3000 to 2500 B.C. show clear signs of physical stress that hint these Yamnaya individuals may have frequently ridden horses, researchers reported March 3 at the American Association for […]
A form of lightning with a knack for sparking wildfires may surge under climate change. An analysis of satellite data suggests “hot lightning” — strikes that channel electrical charge for an extended period — may be more likely to set landscapes ablaze than more ephemeral flashes, researchers report February 10 in Nature Communications. Each 1 […]
When New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who garnered international praise for how she handled the pandemic in her country, recently announced her intention to resign, here’s how she summed up her surprise decision: “I know what the job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it […]
Scientists have identified the stem cells behind the liver’s legendary ability to replenish its tissue. Stem cells not only bolster their own numbers but also become other kinds of cells through a process called differentiation, thereby keeping an organ populated as mature cells die off. The stem cells underpinning this process in the liver had […]