A new study finds that the heat setting you choose when doing laundry makes all the difference when it comes to killing dust mites. The researchers found that washing laundry in hot water--140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 ºC) or higher--kills all house dust mites, compared with just 6.5% of dust mites in laundry washed at 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 ºC), or warm water.

Hotter water temperatures are also more effective in removing dog dander and pollen, says lead researcher Jung-Won Park, M.D., Ph.D., of Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea.

Good news for harried housewives everywhere. Sometimes a house can be too clean. It turns out that kids may need exposure to common bacteria to develop proper immunities.

Endotoxin, a toxic substance made by certain types of bacteria, may reduce the risk of developing the allergic skin condition eczema or wheezing in children if they are exposed to it up to age 3, suggests a study presented at the American Thoracic Society 2007 International Conference, on Sunday, May 20.

Electrical engineers from the University of Delaware and Cambridge NanoTech have demonstrated for the first time how the spin properties of electrons in silicon--the world's most dominant semiconductor, used in electronics ranging from computers to cell phones--can be measured and controlled.

The discovery could dramatically advance the nascent field of spintronics, which focuses on harnessing the magnet-like "spin" property of electrons instead of solely their charge to create exponentially faster, more powerful electronics such as quantum computers.

As societies emerge from conflict, men's dominance at all levels of decision-making ensures women never feel truly secure according to new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

In a unique study of women's security and participation in three post conflict societies—Northern Ireland, South Africa and Lebanon—researchers found that women see security differently from men. And because men dominate the institutions of peace-making and peace-building, they often fail to consider the specific security needs of women.

Astronomers have used powerful adaptive optics technology at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawai‘i to reveal the precise locations and environments of a pair of supermassive black holes at the center of an ongoing collision between two galaxies 300 million light-years away.

The new observations of the galaxy merger known as NGC 6240 reveal that each of the black holes resides at the center of a rotating disk of stars and is surrounded by a cloud of young star clusters formed in the merger.

The research reactor at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is back in action and better than ever.

After $70 million in renovations and more than a year of meticulous system checks, ORNL’s High Flux Isotope Reactor was restarted this week, taken to 10 percent power, and reached its peak power of 85 megawatts Wednesday.