Hints of the Higgs boson—the crucial and last undetected fundamental particle predicted by the central theory of particle physics—have cropped up at a particle collider in Switzerland just as the machine is slated to be dismantled to make room for a more powerful collider. (p. 196)

Magnetic fields such as those found within a few feet of outdoor electric-power lines could make cells that are vulnerable to cancer behave like tumors. (p. 196)

Inventors of a new process for producing titanium claim that their method can reduce the metal's cost to one-third its current price. (p. 197)

Some patients with Parkinson's disease also have destruction of nerve terminals in the heart that affects blood pressure. (p. 197)

Extracts of foods belonging to the cabbage family can block the action of estrogen, a hormone that fuels many cancers. (p. 198)

Altered brain activity in deaf people may strengthen their peripheral vision. (p. 198)

High-speed video and fancy math demonstrate that snapping shrimp make so much noise by popping bubbles. (p. 199)

The hormone leptin may suppress the tongue's ability to taste sugary substances. (p. 199)

Proof settles a wickedly prickly question about unfurling crinkly polygons. (p. 200)

Magnetic fields that map the brain may also treat its disorders. (p. 204)

Some 2,000 light-years from Earth, an elderly star has ejected its outer layers to form a puffy, gaseous cocoon that resembles a "spirograph" pattern. (p. 203)

The European Space Agency successfully launched Cluster II, a group of four spacecraft that will fly in tandem to generate a three-dimensional map of Earth's magnetosphere. (p. 203)

Just as the sun has reached the stormy peak of its 11-year activity cycle, the European Space Agency's Ulysses spacecraft has begun its second and final pass over the sun's poles. (p. 203)

Severe lupus can be reversed with a transplant of the patient's own bone marrow stem cells, after they're allowed to mature outside the body, and medication that neutralizes self-attacking immune cells. (p. 203)

Three laboratories analyzing remaining samples of polio vaccine used in the late 1950s find that none contains any human or simian immunodeficiency virus, or chimpanzee DNA—making polio vaccine unlikely to be the cause of the initial HIV outbreak in central Africa. (p. 203)

Deep in a Wisconsin mine, researchers have uncovered a new way for crystals to grow in nature. (p. 207)

An extraterrestrial source may explain why Earth's mantle holds more platinum, gold, and certain other elements than it should. (p. 207)

As long suspected but never before shown, electrons orbiting an atom can directly excite the atom's nucleus. (p. 207)

Tiny rings of hydrogen molecules show signs of possible superfluid behavior, suggesting that helium might not be the only superfluid after all. (p. 207)