Uncategorized

  1. Brain cells work together to pay attention

    Cells in the brain's cortex may coordinate their electrical activity as attention shifts from visual to tactile information.

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  2. Earth

    Hey polluters! This billboard’s for you

    Motorists generally like and respond to personalized billboard messages about when an engine tune-up may be warranted.

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  3. Health & Medicine

    HIV sexual spread exploits immune sentinels

    The virus that causes AIDS latches onto a protein called DC-SIGN to hitch a ride on immune cells in mucus membranes and spread through the body.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    Cell transplants combat diabetes in mice

    Scientists have successfully reversed diabetes in mice by harvesting immature pancreatic cells that make insulin from one mouse, growing them in culture, and transplanting them into a mouse with the disease, which then recedes.

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  5. Planetary Science

    Meteoric wallop may have diversified life

    A new study suggests that the evolutionary burst on Earth some 540 million years ago occurred around the time that cosmic debris began pummeling our planet at an increasing rate.

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  6. Materials Science

    Rice hulls could nourish Silicon Valley

    Scientists are developing ways to extract and purify the silicon that occurs naturally in rice hulls.

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  7. Earth

    Pollution Keeps Rain up in the Air

    New satellite data indicate that aerosol pollution can break up water droplets in clouds and stop rain.

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  8. Corn Defenses: Bitten plants deploy gut-rotting enzyme

    Some corn varieties that arose on the Caribbean island of Antigua defend themselves with chemical attacks that leave insect gut linings in tatters.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Smoking Gun? Mouse tests link nicotine to crib death

    Nicotine may impair a molecule that's necessary for arousing people and other animals from sleep, an effect that could account for the heightened risk of sudden infant death syndrome in babies born to women who smoked during pregnancy.

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  10. Materials Science

    Better-Built Diamonds: Fast growth, purity may multiply uses

    A research group has fabricated the purest diamonds ever made or found, and another has devised a way to grow high-quality diamonds up to 100 times faster than typical growth rates.

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  11. 19116

    There are unfortunate multiple misuses of the word “artificial” in describing lab-grown diamonds in this article. In gemological use, artificial means imitation or not real. In fact, the lab-grown diamonds described in your article are real, synthetic diamonds with all the properties and chemistry of natural diamonds. Fred WardBethesda, Md.

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  12. Math

    Doing the Wave

    It was the first home game of the season for the University of Maryland football team. About 48,000 fans had crowded into Byrd Stadium to watch the Terrapins take on the University of Akron Zips. Inevitably, during a lull in what turned out to be a rather one-sided contest, the assembled spectators created their own […]

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