All Stories

  1. Planetary Science

    Small exoplanet discovered

    Astronomers have discovered the smallest planet known that is beyond the solar system and orbits an ordinary parent body.

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  2. Space

    Making an impression

    In its seventh day after successfully landing on the Red Planet, the Phoenix Lander digs its first trench and is ready to start its ice-hunting.

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  3. Health & Medicine

    Microbes clean up mercury

    Researchers think a microbe could clean up mercury-laced Native American artifacts.

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  4. Life

    Replaying evolution

    By watching bacteria evolve in the lab for 20 years, researchers show that evolution may be rather capricious.

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  5. Math

    Communities of Communities of …

    A new approach to network theory focusing on the subcommunities within networks may shed light on everything from food webs to terrorist cells. It may even act as an oracle, helping scientists identify connections within a network they haven’t yet seen.

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  6. Humans

    Fostering gains

    New studies indicate that abused and neglected kids benefit from living with relatives and from high-quality foster care services.

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  7. Agriculture

    Green Living, Chinese-Style

    Chinese is developing eco-cities to take their citizens straight from the agricultural to the ecological age.

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  8. Earth

    Natural heat

    Heat from the decay of radioactive elements deep within the planet could meet Earth’s energy needs almost three times over — if we could harness all of it.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    A Faulty Eye Witness: Hallucinations

    Treatment for Oliver Sacks' cancer damaged an eye and triggered something he never expected: his brain to display things that simply didn’t exist.

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  10. Health & Medicine

    A Faulty Eye Witness, Part I

    Oliver Sacks shared observations from his latest journal on how losing sight in one eye changed a man's life. Sacks had intimate knowledge of every detail – because he’s the patient.

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  11. Planetary Science

    Dispatch from Mars, Sol 4

    The good news is a tentative sighting of ice by the Mars Phoenix Lander. The bad news is the discovery of a glitch in the system that will analyze soil samples.

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  12. Chemistry

    Deciding Who’s First

    Oxygen serves as the focus of who to credit with a discovery – and why.

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