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Telltale Heart
Genetics is revealing the first steps in building a heart—the organ that is first to develop, subject to the most birth defects, and difficult to heal when damaged later in life.
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Faces of Perception
Scientists who study face perception currently disagree strongly over whether newborn babies innately know what human faces look like and whether certain brain areas are solely responsible for distinguishing one face from another.
- Tech
Dances with Robots
Soldiers, rescue workers, and others may attain superhuman strength, speed, and endurance as a result of a new military program to develop powered robotic exoskeletons contoured to a person's body.
- Chemistry
Perfecting Porosity
Researchers are designing novel porous materials that could clean up toxins, store gases, or catalyze difficult chemical reactions.
- Astronomy
An Illuminating Journey
Astronomers are beginning to use the cosmic microwave background, the remnant glow from the Big Bang, in a dramatically different way: Instead of treating it as a snapshot of the early universe, researchers are proposing to employ the radiation as a flashlight that probes the evolution of structure in the universe over its entire 13-billion-year history.
- Health & Medicine
Coming to Terms with Death
Some newly recognized forms of cell death might be harnessed to aid people with cancer and other serious diseases.
- Math
Surprisingly Square
Mathematicians take a fresh look at expressing numbers as the sums of squares.
- Physics
Pitching Science
A new computer model of baseball pitching helps give pitching robots humanlike abilities and may have enabled engineers to solve a half-century-old puzzle of baseball science.
- Paleontology
Beyond Bones
The forensic analysis of trace fossils such as footprints, nests, burrows, and even coprolites—fossilized feces—reveal subtle clues about ancient species, their behavior, and their environment.
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- Anthropology
Evolution’s Youth Movement
The fossils of ancient children may provide insights into the evolution of modern Homo sapiens.
