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  1. Letters

    To spot a planet “Planetary peekaboo” (SN: 9/22/12, p. 26) says that to hunt for faraway planets, the Kepler spacecraft “watches for blinks occurring when a planet dims a star’s light by passing in front of it.” For a star to dim when a planet moves in front of it requires us to be in […]

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  2. SN Online

    ON THE SCENE BLOG Geneticists poke a little fun at themselves during a recent meeting. Read “Buzzword bingo.” Emanuel Soeding/Christian-Albrechts University, William Hay SCIENCE & SOCIETY Mapping U.S. votes for president according to state population gives a new view of politics. See “Red state, blue state.” EARTH Feedback loops are melting more ice than predicted, […]

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  3. Science Future for December 1, 2012

    December 15 Activities, films and demonstrations reveal physics principles at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. See bit.ly/SFfullspec December 17 Learn about super­massive black holes with astronomer Günther Hasinger at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. See bit.ly/SFgunther

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  4. Science Past from the issue of December 1, 1962

    NEW DATING METHOD FOR MILLION-YEAR-OLD FOSSILS — A new radioactive dating method promises to close one of the major remaining gaps in methods of fixing dates on the geological and archaeological time scales. The new procedure, based on radioactive inequality in nature between uranium-234 and its parent U-238, was originated by David Turber of Columbia’s […]

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  5. Book Review: How Ancient Europeans Saw the World by Peter S. Wells

    Review by Tom Siegfried.

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  6. Book Review: The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success by Kevin Dutton

    Review by Allison Bohac.

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  7. I, Lobster by Nancy Frazier

    More than just a tasty meal — though this book does include recipes — the lobster is a star in history, art and science. Univ. of New Hampshire, 2012, 254 p., $24.95

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  8. Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color by Nina G. Jablonski

    An anthropologist examines the evolution of human skin pigmentation, its relation to health and the role of skin color in social history. Univ. of California, 2012, 260 p., $29.95

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  9. On a Farther Shore by William Souder

    Fifty years after the publication of Silent Spring, a biographer creates a sensitive portrait of Rachel Carson’s life and research. Crown Publishers, 2012, 496 p., $30

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  10. Measurement by Paul Lockhart

    A mathematician untangles the basic concepts of symmetry, shapes and measurements in a reader-friendly way. Harvard Univ., 2012, 407 p., $29.95

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  11. Stardust Revolution: The New Story of Our Origin in the Stars by Jacob Berkowitz

    The author describes efforts by astrobiologists to put the origins of life into a cosmic context in this comprehensive history of “stardust science.” Prometheus, 2012, 376 p., $27

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  12. Planetary Science

    Digging deep into Martian soil

    NASA's rover takes a closer look at Mars' surface.

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