Feature

  1. Earth

    Air Sickness

    Studies have begun showing subtle but substantial harmful effects in outwardly healthy people who regularly breathe hazy air.

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  2. Earth

    Catch Zero

    It generally has taken less than a generation for modern, industrial-scale fishing, once deployed in a new plot of ocean, to exhaust the vast majority of the sea’s edible bounty and leave behind decimated ecosystems and depleted economic opportunities.

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  3. Physics

    Mastering the Mixer

    Almost anything can happen when a batch of grains or powders is mixed—including striking, swirling patterns and spontaneous, total separation—so researchers are playing with beads, salt, sand, and other particles in simple tumblers to find out what's going on.

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  4. Paleontology

    Learning from the Present

    New field studies of unfossilized bones, as well as databases full of information about current fossil excavations and previous fossil finds, are providing insights into how complete—or incomplete—Earth's fossil record may be.

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  5. Astronomy

    Supernova Spectacular

    Studying starburst galaxies, relatively nearby galaxies that are undergoing a tremendous rate of star formation, may reveal how elliptical galaxies arose and black holes grew in the early universe.

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  6. Life

    All the World’s a Phage

    There are an amazing number of bacteriophages—viruses that kill bacteria—in the world.

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  7. Humans

    Udder Beauty

    Sophisticated screening of livestock championship winners may become as common as urine tests of Olympic athletes.

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  8. Anthropology

    The Ultimate Colonists

    Human ancestors managed to adjust to life in a variety of ecosystems during the Stone Age, indicating that their social lives were more complex than they've often been given credit for.

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  9. Materials Science

    Microbial Materials

    Microorganisms can be coaxed into producing high-tech components and can themselves serve as valuable ingredients in new classes of materials.

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  10. Physics

    Through the Looking Glass

    A proposed universe of unseen material, where every ordinary particle has a shadowy counterpart, could explain several conundrums in cosmology.

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  11. Anthropology

    The Forager King

    A celebrated anthropologist surprises and inspires his biographer.

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  12. Animals

    Life Without Sex

    The search is on for creatures that have evolved for eons without sex.

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