Feature

  1. Repeat After Me

    New research suggests that the ability to infer the thoughts and feelings of others grows out of a capacity for imitation exhibited by human infants and perhaps by other animals, as well.

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  2. Astronomy

    Gorgeous Gas

    Beyond their undeniable beauty, images of nearby, starlit clouds of gas and dust, known as HeII nebulae, may reveal properties of the very first stars in the universe.

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  3. Earth

    Patterns from Nowhere

    Scientists are developing geophysical models that may explain the polygonal patterns that appear in and on the ground in remote regions of the Arctic, Antarctica, and possibly the surface of Mars.

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  4. Chemistry

    Plastic Electric

    Scientists are finding new ways to improve the molecular order and electrical conductivity of a commercially important conducting plastic.

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  5. Earth

    The Fires Below

    Underground coal fires help shape the landscape on many scales and in many ways, some transient and some long-lasting.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    Unproven Elixir

    For aging men with low testosterone, hormone replacement may stall or counteract some common declines that come with age, but it'll take years to determine whether the treatment is doing most men more good than harm.

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  7. Yikes! The Lichens Went Flying

    Tales from the dark (and frequently crunchy) side of biodiversity.

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  8. Physics

    Seeking the Mother of All Matter

    World's mightiest particle collider may transform less-than-nothing into a primordial something.

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  9. Plants

    Any Hope for Old Chestnuts?

    Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of the discovery of chestnut blight in the United States, but enthusiasts still haven't given up hope of restoring American chestnut forests.

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  10. Computing

    Minding Your Business

    By means of novel sensors and mathematical models, scientists are teaching the basics of human social interactions to computers, which should ease the ever-expanding collaboration between people and machines.

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  11. A Rocky Start

    A new origin-of-life theory holds that life began within the confines of iron sulfide rocks surrounding hydrothermal vents at the ocean bottom.

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  12. Earth

    Eye of the Tiger

    Recent research has upended a 130-year-old, previously unchallenged theory about how the semiprecious stone called tiger's-eye is formed.

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