Category Archives: news briefs

If you have any ideas about what to do with the massive, orbiting Hubble Space Telescope now that its final servicing mission has been canceled, here’s your chance to tell NASA what you think. Even while lawmakers and researchers are … Continue reading →

The Amazonian rainforests are changing, even in areas untouched by human activities such as logging, clearing, or burning — and rising levels of carbon dioxide may be to blame. Over the past 20 years, the species composition of the “pristine” … Continue reading →

In many cultures, people repetitively finger strands of beads to help them deal with their worries. Now British researchers may have figured out why this kind of distraction works. A report by Emily Holmes of University College London and her … Continue reading →

It appears that astronomers are in a hot race to discover the most distant galaxy in the universe. Just a few weeks ago, astronomers using the Hubble and Keck telescopes announced a record-holder — a galaxy 13 billion light-years away. … Continue reading →

When your girlfriend tells you she feels your pain, she’s not lying. British researchers from University College London have found that feeling empathy activates regions of the brain involved with processing pain. Tania Singer and her colleagues used 16 heterosexual … Continue reading →

A commercially available drug may help treat severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which currently has no effective therapies or vaccines. An international team of researchers report in the March Nature Medicine that pegylated interferon-alpha, an antiviral drug commonly used … Continue reading →

The Beagle 2 Mars lander may be lost, but British archeologists may have found the original ship it was named after. Charles Darwin’s observations during his voyage aboard HMS Beagle in the 1830s were crucial in helping him formulate the … Continue reading →

Researchers have developed a powerful new method to peer inside cells and tissues. As reported in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition, Stephan Thiberge of Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science and his colleagues have come … Continue reading →

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has recorded yet another dramatic image of the universe around us, this time the death throes of a fading supernova. Called SN 1987A, the brightest stellar explosion of modern times was discovered by astronomers 17 years … Continue reading →

Dogs have an uncanny knack for understanding human gestures — and we may have helped them evolve it. Previous research by Harvard anthropologist Brian Hare demonstrated that domesticated canines interpret human cues such as glances or pointing better than our … Continue reading →