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The cradle, not the grave (03 July 07:55) |
| A chance observation may help explain why some babies die unexpectedlySUDDEN infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the biggest killer of babies over one month old in the rich world (many things ki... |
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Up the garden path (03 July 06:32) |
| The latest results in the search for Martians"SPIT on the desert and a flower grows." That, at least, is the proverb on Earth. On Mars, however, you might hope for asparagus, green beans and... |
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Of sommeliers and stomachs (03 July 06:32) |
| Red wine exercises its benefits before it enters the bloodstreamFINE food sings on the palate, but pairing it with the right wine creates a chorus. Among those in the know, the plum, chocola... |
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A balance of risk (03 July 06:32) |
| Pesticides keep food edible and cheap. On the other hand they are, by definition, poisonous. Europe's legislators thus face a dilemmaWHAT is the difference between risk and hazard? Quite a l... |
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The crowd within (26 June 06:54) |
| A battle of ideas is going on inside your mindTHAT problem solving becomes easier when more minds are put to the task is no more than common sense. But the phenomenon goes further than that.... |
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Signs of a long life (26 June 06:54) |
| Rummaging through the by-products of cells and looking for patterns could help to unlock the secrets of better healthPERSONALISED medicine offers a huge promise. It would, in theory, be poss... |
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Stars in their eyes (26 June 06:54) |
| An armchair astronomer discovers something very oddTHE task of peering into the cosmos and discovering strange new galaxies sounds like a job for astronomers armed with big and very expensiv... |
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Bug hunting (26 June 06:54) |
| An awful lot of microbes could reveal a great deal about the human bodyTHIS year teams of dedicated researchers working on the new Human Microbiome Project (HMP) began collecting faeces samp... |
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It?s mine, I tell you (19 June 06:18) |
| Mankind?s inner chimpanzee refuses to let go. This matters to everything from economics to law?I AM the most offensively possessive man on earth. I do something to things. Let me pick up an ... |
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Cutting the competition (19 June 06:18) |
| Mutilating male members may mar men?s mischievous matingsCIRCUMCISION and other forms of male-genital mutilation are commonplace in many societies around the world. The origin of these pract... |
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Better than cure (19 June 06:18) |
| Healthy living switches off genes that promote cancerTHAT a healthy way of life can prevent cancer is well known. It is also becoming clear that clean living can help those who already have ... |
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Mammoths (12 June 06:39) |
| A very old hairballThis is not any old hairball. It is a very old hairball. It comes from a woolly mammoth that was buried in the Siberian permafrost. An analysis of its DNA, and the DNA fro... |
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The misfits (12 June 06:39) |
| The genetic legacy of nomadism may be an inability to settleABOUT one in 20 children (those under 18) have a group of symptoms that has come to be known as attention-deficit hyperactivity di... |
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Making no waves (12 June 06:39) |
| A new swimsuit is shattering records and unleashing debate ATHLETES in the ancient Olympics competed in the buff, on the grounds (among other things) that clothes were a hindrance to perform... |
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In search of forever (12 June 06:39) |
| As a source of power for cars, fuel cells have been a disappointment. For laptops and mobile phones, they are just about to take offMETHANOL is nasty stuff. Careless distillation in many a b... |
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Hair today, hair tomorrow (05 June 07:30) |
| A cure for baldnessTHE success of Silvio Berlusconi's hair transplant, four years ago, relied on the fact that the septuagenarian prime minister had enough of a thatch on the back of his hea... |
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On the move (05 June 07:30) |
| Organ-transplant data provide more evidence that stem cells cause cancer DOCTORS track the long-term health of organ-transplant patients in registries. Such registries make it possible to un... |
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Getting the message (05 June 07:30) |
| Good news on treatment. Bad news on propagandaTO EVERY action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton's third law describes life as well as physics. Once it was only AIDS activists?... |
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The Phoenix has landed (29 May 07:11) |
| Phoenix has arrived on Mars, in search of places where life might exist. But an analysis of the planet's rocks suggests that there is probably none to look forTHE past few days have brought ... |
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Target acquired (29 May 07:11) |
| It may become possible to vaccinate against brain tumoursCERVICAL cancer is caused by a virus. That has been known for some time and it has led to a vaccine that seems to prevent it. Since t... |
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Vital statistics (29 May 07:11) |
| Girls are becoming as good as boys at mathematics, and are still better at readingTRADITION has it that boys are good at counting and girls are good at reading. So much so that Mattel once p... |
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Storking the ancient skies (29 May 07:11) |
| Palaeontology takes wingThis is an artist's impression of a flying reptile called Quetzalcoatlus eating a small dinosaur. Until recently, Quetzalcoatlus and its relations were thought to hav... |
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Much ado about nothing (22 May 06:22) |
| The Casimir effect, a curious consequence of quantum theory, may yet have practical applicationsCAN something come of nothing? Philosophers debated that question for millennia before physics... |
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All on the mind (22 May 06:22) |
| Prepare for drugs that will improve memory, concentration and learningFOR thousands of years, people have sought substances that they hoped would boost their mental powers and their stamina.... |
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A shot in the dark no more (22 May 06:22) |
| An age-old scientific mystery is solvedDOCTORS often exude an air of omniscience, but in truth they are surprisingly ignorant. For example, they have spent eight decades adding alum to vacci... |
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From he that hath not (22 May 06:22) |
| If you are at the bottom of the heap, mental processes may keep you thereNEW drugs may help to enhance people's mental powers (see article). But a study carried out by Pamela Smith, of Radbo... |
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Cheetahs of the deep (15 May 06:38) |
| Some whales dive deep and fast hunting their preyEVERY ecosystem has a cast of characters playing similar roles. The bison, moose and elk of North America do much the same thing as antelope ... |
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Doctor on call (15 May 06:38) |
| Simple accessories could turn mobile phones into useful medical devices ROBI MAAMARI stares intently at the screen of his mobile phone. The student is not squinting to tap out yet another da... |
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No smoke or mirrors (15 May 06:38) |
| Replacing gas lamps with LEDs DUSSELDORF is not well-endowed with nostalgic charm, and soon may be shorter of it still. The 17,000 or so gas lamps that still bathe the streets of the old cen... |
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Dead water (15 May 06:38) |
| Too much nitrogen being washed into the sea is causing dead zones to spread alarmingly NEW life generally flourishes in the spring, unless it is marine life in the Gulf of Mexico. Every spri... |
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Resisting arrest (15 May 06:38) |
| Fighting malarial drug resistanceWILL the world lose another miracle cure? Fifty years ago chloroquine seemed to be an unbeatable malaria remedy. But as the popularity spread of this synthet... |
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The roots of chronic fatigue (08 May 06:10) |
| ME is a puzzling illness, but it appears to have a biological basis and a test for it could be developedA DISEASE that carries with it a social stigma causes additional and unnecessary suffe... |
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Whose pants on fire? (08 May 06:10) |
| The latest lie-detector trial suggests the best way to detect liars may be to lieWHETHER it be changes in body language, sweaty palms or fluctuations in brain activity, no surrogate marker o... |
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Silencing of the lambs (08 May 06:10) |
| Abuse in childhood may change the way genes workA FEW years ago, researchers in Montreal produced a disturbing finding. By the simple act of neglecting her young, a mother rat could permanen... |
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Return to the fold (08 May 06:10) |
| Playing with proteinsFOR sheer adrenaline, the new computer game ?foldit?, does not match the likes of ?Grand Theft Auto IV?. But for the world's obsessive problem solvers, a three-dimension... |
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Naughty nesters (08 May 06:10) |
| How cuckoos trick their way into another bird's nestCUCKOLDS are men whose wives gave birth to infants that were blatantly not their own. The well known trickery of the cuckoo, the bird from... |
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Gnashers at work (01 May 05:39) |
| The jaws and teeth of fossils may not reliably predict diets FEW fossils command as much respect as Tyrannosaurus rex. With a head the size of a refrigerator and teeth as big as bananas, it ... |
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Home invention (01 May 05:39) |
| An increasing number of tinkerers are building their own gadgetsTHE standard sort of science fair can be a little bit stuffy. Precocious youngsters with a taste for laboratory notebooks spen... |
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Seeing is believing (01 May 05:39) |
| The prospects for using genes as a therapy may be improvingFOR around 40 years scientists have understood how genes work. They have known the structure of genes, how they replicate, how they... |
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Inside a deal (01 May 05:39) |
| It pays to get inside your opponents' heads rather than their heartsJUDGED by the number of times that negotiations are said to have ended in a ?win-win situation?, striking a successful dea... |
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Before the exodus (24 April 06:11) |
| For two-thirds of its history, Homo sapiens lived exclusively in Africa. Only now are the details of that period becoming clearMITOCHONDRIAL DNA is a remarkable thing. Itself the remnant of ... |
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Correction: Financial endocrinology (24 April 06:11) |
| In ?Bulls at work? in last week's issue, we referred to ten-year bond-futures contracts. In fact the research in question involved the prices of options on such contracts. Sorry. This error ... |
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Critical thinking (24 April 06:11) |
| Learned flies die youngYOU do not usually get something for nothing. Now a new study reveals that the evolution of an improved learning ability could come at a particularly high price: an ea... |
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Early warning system (24 April 06:11) |
| It is possible to predict human errors from brain activityANYONE undertaking a repetitive or routine task knows the problem: suddenly something they have done dozens or hundreds of times bef... |
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Out of the clouds (24 April 06:11) |
| Summoning lightning bolts with a laserTHROUGHOUT most of history, lightning was as much a mystery as it was a terror. Nobody understood what it was and buildings were perpetually damaged. Th... |
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Sugar and spice... (24 April 06:11) |
| Skip breakfast for a daughter, eat up your cereals for a sonTHERE are numerous old wives' tales about how a couple can increase their chances of having a boy or a girl. For a son, make love ... |
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To have and have not (17 April 06:12) |
| Some people show the cellular signs of dementia without being dementedALZHEIMER'S disease is one of the most puzzling around?and also one of the most important. The longer someone lives, the... |
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Silver tongues (17 April 06:12) |
| Regulators are looking more closely at nanotechnology claims ANCIENT Phoenicians stored their drinking water in silver vessels, but not for aesthetic reasons. They discovered that by doing s... |
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Stemming the tumorous tide (17 April 06:12) |
| Cancers grow from stem cells. That discovery should translate into better treatment for tumours of all typesSTEM cells have a controversial reputation, but in truth they are what makes human... |
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Correction: Palaeontology (17 April 06:12) |
| The photograph captioned ?Plants, too?, accompanying our article ?Seeing the light? on the second page of last week's Science and Technology section was, in fact, a picture of a fossil feath... |
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