Vol. 172 No. #6
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More Stories from the August 11, 2007 issue

  1. Planetary Science

    Deep Impact and Stardust: Still on assignment

    Two sturdy NASA spacecraft have new assignments, studying comets and looking for exoplanets.

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  2. Earth

    Cholesterol boosts diesel toxicity

    Nanoparticles in diesel exhaust can activate genes that worsen cholesterol's damaging effects.

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  3. Animals

    Gender bender

    Disabling a chemical-sniffing organ crucial for courting behavior makes girl mice act like frisky boys.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    CT heart scans: Risk climbs as age at screening falls

    CT scans are increasingly used to investigate heart blockages, but their X rays can increase cancer risk.

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  5. Materials Science

    Pliable carbon

    The layers of carbon atoms that form graphite can be assembled into strong but flexible "graphene paper."

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  6. Astronomy

    Veiled black holes

    Many X ray sources in the sky could be active galactic nuclei smothered by gas and dust that blocks their emission of visible and ultraviolet light.

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  7. Earth

    Beware summer radon-test results

    Measuring household radon levels in summer may give misleadingly low results.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Serotonin lower in shift workers

    Workers who rotate between day and night shifts have less of the brain chemical serotonin than day shift workers do.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Skeletal Discovery: Bone cells affect metabolism

    A protein made by bone cells has a surprising influence on energy metabolism, and could have a role in treating diabetes.

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  10. Animals

    Ferrets Gone Wild: Reintroduced animals coming back in Wyoming

    A Wyoming population of endangered black-footed ferrets, started from captive-bred animals, has survived difficulties and is doing well.

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  11. Earth

    Bad for Baby: New risks found for plastic constituent

    Early exposure to bisphenol A, a building block of polycarbonate plastics, can trigger a variety of later health problems.

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  12. Health & Medicine

    Nerve Link: Alzheimer’s suspect shows up in glaucoma

    Amyloid-beta, the protein fragment implicated in Alzheimer's disease, may also play a role in glaucoma.

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  13. Earth

    Drug Overflow: Pharmaceutical factories foul waters in India

    A treatment plant in India that processes waste from drug factories feeds enormous amounts of antibiotics and other drugs into local waterways.

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  14. Bad News, Good News: ADHD-risk gene has silver lining

    A gene variant that increases the risk for attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder in young children also helps the problem resolve by the teen years.

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  15. Physics

    Newton’s Dusty Mirror: Old experiment inspires ultrafast imaging

    An experiment devised by Isaac Newton inspires a modern successor, in which X rays capture the image of a microscopic explosion.

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  16. Health & Medicine

    Taking a Jab at Cancer

    Vaccines that train a person's immune system to kill cancerous cells, when combined with drugs that block tumor defense mechanisms, are starting to show promise.

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  17. Earth

    Hammered Saws

    Sawfish, shark relatives that almost went extinct several decades ago, have now gained protection by international treaty.

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  18. Humans

    Letters from the August 11, 2007, issue of Science News

    Sum kids While testing was done on 5- or 6-year-old children (“Take a Number: Kids show math insights without instruction,” SN: 6/2/07, p. 341), it would be interesting to see if this intuitive skill persists after these students are exposed to standard mathematical instruction in the higher grades. I suspect that the answer will be […]

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