Uncategorized

  1. Health & Medicine

    A look back at 2013’s disasters

    The Philippines, India and China each lost more than 1,000 lives in 2013 in mass calamities.

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  2. Microbes

    Microbes floating among clouds may munch on sugar

    Floating in a cloud and noshing sweets while wrapped in a cozy bubble sounds like a pleasant dream. For some lucky bacteria, it may be a reality.

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  3. Materials Science

    Carbon supplants silicon in electronic medical sensors

    Prototypes of electronic medical devices constructed from organic materials are noninvasive yet offer similar performance as silicon-based health sensors.

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  4. Earth

    Feedback

    Readers comment on changing bird populations, question the usefulness of a new medical test and discuss the interesting physics behind rainbows.

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  5. Planetary Science

    Preparing for disaster, celebrating success

    Science cannot prevent all disasters or solve all the problems they spawn, but it can point to the best ways to prepare, making disasters less damaging than they might otherwise be

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  6. Health & Medicine

    Old drug reduces herpes symptoms, spread in animal tests

    The antidepressant tranylcypromine might also work as antiviral against herpes, animal studies suggest.

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  7. Astronomy

    Starlight robs galaxy of stellar ingredients

    Light from newborn stars drives gas out of a distant galaxy, a process that may prevent future stars from being born.

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  8. Archaeology

    Human ancestors engraved abstract patterns

    Indonesian Homo erectus carved zigzags on a shell at least 430,000 years ago.

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  9. Cosmology

    Most precise snapshot of the universe unveiled

    New results from the Planck satellite provide the most detailed look yet of the makeup of the universe.

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  10. Tech

    Designing robots to help in a disaster

    Ideally, robots could take over for human crews in disaster zones. But seemingly simple tasks, such as walking, communicating and staying powered up, still pose big challenges.

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  11. Earth

    Studying a volcano in a war zone

    New isotope analyses offer bad news for the people of Goma, a burgeoning city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Mount Nyiragongo may be more dangerous than expected.

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  12. Archaeology

    Magnetism paved way for excavation without digging

    In the 1960s, archaeologists used a new technique to locate and map a submerged Greek city without digging.

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