All Stories

  1. Science & Society

    Science Ink

    Tattoos of the Science Obsessed by Carl Zimmer.

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  2. BOOK REVIEW: Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World by Richard Rhodes

    Review by Nick Bascom.

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  3. Jars of Plenty

    Ancient Greek trading vessels carried much more than wine.

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  4. Humans

    Missing Lincs

    Lesser-known genetic material helps explain why humans are human.

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  5. Tech

    Out of the Box

    3-D entertainment steps beyond the glasses and headaches.

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  6. Earth

    Polar ice sheets are synchronized swimmers

    Glaciers in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres advance and retreat together.

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  7. Health & Medicine

    Immune booster also works in reverse

    Injections of the protein interleukin-2 can calm runaway defenses that damage tissues in the body, two studies show.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Weaker brain links found in psychopaths

    Decreased communication between emotional and executive centers may contribute to the mental disorder.

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  9. Space

    Christmas gamma-ray burst still puzzles

    Nearly a year after receiving a spectacular celestial gift, astrophysicists are still asking: “What is it?”

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  10. Humans

    Germs’ persistence: Nothing to sneeze at

    Years ago, I read (probably in Science News) that viruses can’t survive long outside their hosts. That implied any surface onto which a sneezed-out germ found itself — such as the arm of a chair, kitchen counter or car-door handle — would effectively decontaminate itself within hours to a day. A pair of new flu papers now indicates that although many germs will die within hours, none of us should count on it. Given the right environment, viruses can remain infectious — potentially for many weeks, one of the studies finds.

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  11. Space

    Superbubble harbors cosmic rays

    Stellar nursery jump-starts rays’ journey to Earth.

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  12. Life

    Biology’s big bang had a long fuse

    The fossil record’s earliest troves of animal life are the result of more than 200 million years of evolution.

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