Pain caused by bone cancer in mice can be alleviated somewhat by osteoprotegerin, a drug being tested for osteoporosis, suggesting a possible new treatment for people with this cancer. (p. 292)

Excavations of an exposed reef on Africa's Red Sea coast indicate that humans lived there 125,000 years ago, pushing back the date for the earliest seaside settlement by at least 10,000 years. (p. 292)

Inactivating two genes in red flour beetles causes grubs to grow lots of legs—and provides clues to the puzzle of the evolution of the six-legged body plan. (p. 293)

Using the sharp X-ray eye of an orbiting observatory, astronomers have employed a novel method to measure distance within the Milky Way. (p. 293)

Mounting evidence that magnetic fields of surprising strength permeate intergalactic space raises questions about how the fields form and what effects they have. (p. 294)

Scientists have created herbicide-resistant corn with a new kind of genetic engineering that involves subtly altering one of the plant's own genes rather than adding a new gene. (p. 294)

President Clinton directed the Defense Department to stop degrading signals from 24 Global Positioning System satellites, allowing civilians to receive the same location-pinpointing accuracy long available to the U.S. military. (p. 295)

Hundreds of tiny, young blister beetles cluster into lumps resembling female bees and hitchhike on the male bees that they seduce. (p. 295)

Untangling a web of conflicting demands can be tough on computers. (p. 296)

Toasting a burst of discovery about bubbles in champagne and beer. (p. 300)

Scientists have almost finished sequencing the genes of rice and of a man. (p. 298)

Mutated genes may explain why humans have a poor sense of smell. (p. 298)

Cranberry products can retard the growth and spread of breast cancer in rodents. (p. 298)

Diets rich in sweets and other quickly digested carbohydrates appear to increase an individual's risk of developing colon cancer. (p. 298)

Air viscosity makes the rolling speed of a spinning, tipping coin go up as its energy goes down until the coin suddenly stops. (p. 303)

At moderate traffic volumes, a single car moving at randomly fluctuating speeds can cause traffic jams in its wake. (p. 303)

A black hole paired with another body can succumb to chaos when they orbit each other, making it more difficult to detect gravitational waves produced by such objects. (p. 303)

Cast aside as a way to reproduce music, LP phonograph records reveal another, unsuspected talent that scientists plan to exploit-focusing X rays. (p. 303)

Magnetic fields pump heat into ions when field lines of opposite orientation snap and reconnect. (p. 303)