All Stories

  1. Earth

    Inhaling your food—and its cooking fuel

    Cooking emits easily inhaled pollutants that travel throughout a home and can linger for hours.

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  2. Anthropology

    Gene implicated in apes’ brain growth

    A gene with poorly understood functions began to accumulate favorable mutations around 8 million years ago and probably contributed to brain expansion in ancient apes.

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  3. Tech

    Fluid lens flows into focus

    By controlling a boundary between oil and water, researchers have created a liquid lens that can quickly alter its shape in response to electric signals.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    Papillomavirus infections spike in sunny months

    Getting sun could increase vulnerability to a sexually transmitted virus that may lead to cervical cancer.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Exercise after breast cancer extends life

    After a woman survives an initial bout with breast cancer, being physically active improves her odds of beating the disease over the long term.

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  6. 19403

    In this article, the photo comparison of the dam site is deceptive because the two photos of the same spot appear to have been taken during different seasons. Hence, the lower photo shows a scene that appears excessively desolate, but not because of the loss of the dam. Michael C. ReedKalamazoo, Mich.

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  7. Earth

    Tales of the Undammed

    Although destroying dams is often presumed to restore rivers, the results of such action are actually mixed, according to recent studies.

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  8. Quite a Switch

    Cells use ribonucleic acids that bind to small molecules such as vitamins to control gene activity.

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  9. Humans

    From the March 31, 1934, issue

    A desert earthquake, producing bromine from seawater, and nerve damage from alcohol consumption.

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  10. Understanding Evolution

    Understanding Evolution is an extensive Web site designed to meet the needs of K–12 teachers presenting evolution in the classroom. Developed by the University of California Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley and the National Center for Science Education, the site provides an informal online course covering essential science content, as well as a searchable database […]

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  11. Health & Medicine

    A Virus Crosses Over to Wild-Animal Hunters

    A potentially dangerous virus is moving from nonhuman primates to Africans who hunt and eat wild animals, a new study suggests.

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  12. 19402

    When I was a teenager, I lived with a brown capuchin monkey. Among other games, we enjoyed trading: his poker chips for my food. When he was out of poker chips, he would improvise by finding pebbles, paper, toys, and other household detritus to trade. When all was traded into my pile, he would give […]

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