Feature

  1. 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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  2. 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.

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  3. 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.

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  4. Chemistry

    Perfecting Porosity

    Researchers are designing novel porous materials that could clean up toxins, store gases, or catalyze difficult chemical reactions.

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  5. 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.

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  6. 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.

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  7. Math

    Surprisingly Square

    Mathematicians take a fresh look at expressing numbers as the sums of squares.

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  8. 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.

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  9. 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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  10. Astronomy

    Nine Planets, or Eight?

    Astronomers probe Pluto's place in the solar system.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    Understanding Cancer’s Spread

    Where cancer goes, where it grows, and why.

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  12. Anthropology

    Evolution’s Youth Movement

    The fossils of ancient children may provide insights into the evolution of modern Homo sapiens.

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