As dust from the Sahara blows thousands of kilometers across the Atlantic Ocean, it becomes progressively more nutritious for marine microbes, a new study suggests. Chemical reactions in the atmosphere chew on iron minerals in the dust, making them more water soluble and creating a crucial nutrient source for the iron-starved seas, researchers report September […]

When the arm is on the lap or the side, a blood pressure reading can be erroneously high. But when the arm is supported and at heart height, a blood pressure reading is more likely to be right. In a clinical trial, researchers investigated the effect that different arm positions had on blood pressure readings, […]

As artificial intelligence explodes in popularity, two of its pioneers have nabbed the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics. The prize goes to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced October 8. These computational tools, which […]

Horse-riding Scythian herders and warriors, who inhabited Central Asia and Eastern Europe around 2,500 years ago, may have had cultural roots several thousand kilometers to the east in Siberia, a new study suggests (SN: 7/27/23). Remains of at least one person and 18 horses found atop a roughly 2,800-year-old tomb in southern Siberia may come […]

Dozens of fugitive stars were caught fleeing a dense star cluster in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The swarm of speeding stars could mean that such runaways had a bigger influence on cosmic evolution than previously thought, astronomers report October 9 in Nature. Massive stars are born in young clusters, packed so close […]

Cancer-destroying particle beams have been caught red-handed. Particle beams can deliver a burst of destructive energy directly to tumors – assuming the beam is in the right place. Now, using a radioactive beam, scientists have determined the location of the beam while treating tumors in mice. It is the first successful treatment of tumors with […]