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  1. How spiny lobsters make scary noises

    Spiny lobsters make alarm and protest sounds by drawing their leathery plectra—protrusions at the base of each anntenna—across scaley ridges below their eyes, much like a violin bow pulling across a string.

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  2. Here come mom and dad

    Children in two-parent families spend more time with their mothers and fathers now than they did 20 years ago.

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  3. Brains show evolutionary designs

    Mammal species exhibit basic types of brain design from which they have evolved a wide array of brain sizes, according to a new analysis.

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  4. Astronomy

    Free-floaters: Images of planets?

    Several recent studies have escalated the debate about what exactly constitutes a planet.

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  5. 18932

    Please explain a curious statement in “A more perfect union.” The article paraphrases Jonas Sandstrom of Uppsala University in Sweden as suggesting that an “endosymbiont’s isolation may be a one-way ticket to extinction. Once the bacterium loses genes . . . it has no way of getting them back. It can’t, therefore, evolve away from […]

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  6. A More Perfect Union

    Forsaking life in the outside world, endosymbiotic bacteria of some insects traded freedom and nutrients for life inside a cell.

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  7. Chemistry

    Cosmic Chemistry Gets Creative

    By simulating extraterrestrial impacts on Earth, researchers are firing away at the question of how life started.

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  8. Computing

    Motif for Infection

    A novel computer program pinpoints proteins of troublesome bacteria.

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  9. Physics

    Device shifts molecules into slow motion

    Unlike other particle accelerators, which manipulate the speed and energy of charged particles, a new device accelerates neutral molecules such as ammonia.

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  10. Outcry saves National Zoo’s research site

    In the final hours, Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence Small withdrew his proposal to close the National Zoo's research center in Front Royal, Virginia.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    Gene stifled in some lung, breast cancers

    The silencing of a gene called RASSF1A appears to increase the risk of cancer, studies of lung and breast tumors show.

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  12. Domesticated goats show unique gene mix

    A genetic analysis finds a surprising amount of genetic unity in goats living in Europe, Africa, and Asia, supporting the theory that goats were widely transported and traded throughout human history.

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