Uncategorized

  1. Plants

    Morphinefree Mutant Poppies: Novel plants make pharmaceutical starter

    A Tasmanian company has developed a poppy that produces a commercially useful drug precursor instead of full-fledged morphine, and a research team now reports how the plant does it.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Sleep on It: Fitful slumber tied to diabetes risk

    Disturbed slumber, or sleep apnea, appears to make people more susceptible to certain conditions that lead to diabetes.

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  3. Paleontology

    Big Gulp? Neck ribs may have given aquatic beast unique feeding style

    The fossilized neck bones of a 230-million-year-old sea creature have features suggesting that the animal's snakelike throat could flare open and create suction to pull in prey.

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  4. Humans

    Letters from the September 25, 2004, issue of Science News

    More of less is more The counterintuitive finding that atrazine is more likely to kill tadpoles when it is highly diluted (“Just a Tad Is Too Much: Less is worse for tadpoles exposed to chemicals,” SN: 7/10/04, p. 20: Just a Tad Is Too Much: Less is worse for tadpoles exposed to chemicals) reminds me […]

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  5. Tech

    Bartending lessons for microassembly

    Engineers have demonstrated the feasibility of quickly assembling identical microcircuit components by agitating subunits in a liquid.

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  6. Marrow cells take up residence in wounds

    Bone marrow–derived cells linger in skin wounds much longer than previously thought, aiding in healing.

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  7. Physics

    Orbiting relativity test gets slow start

    Unexpected but necessary adjustments to a satelliteborne test of relativity theory have slashed the time available to collect data.

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  8. Tech

    Transmuting a powerful poison

    A new chemical process for fuel cells powered by hydrocarbons eliminates carbon monoxide that would clog fuel-cell electrodes while also extracting energy from the troublesome gas.

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  9. Chemistry

    Bacteria send out molecular scrounger for copper

    Scientists have discovered the organic molecule that bacteria use to take up copper, which the microbes then use to chemically crack methane.

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  10. 19461

    Far from being a pathology, the eye cast noted in this article is exactly what one would expect for a right-eye-dominant artist. A dominant eye would see itself directly in a mirror but would observe the other eye looking at an angle away from the median. Before concluding that Rembrandt had an anomalous visual condition, […]

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  11. Humans

    Rembrandt’s eye saw no depth

    The 17th-century Dutch artist Rembrandt lacked stereoscopic vision, an optical analysis of his self-portraits suggests.

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  12. Health & Medicine

    Hepatitis B vaccine linked to MS

    People who develop multiple sclerosis are more likely than others to have received a hepatitis B vaccination in recent years.

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