Vol. 158 No. #8
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More Stories from the August 19, 2000 issue

  1. Animals

    Slavemaker Ants: Misunderstood Farmers?

    A test of what once seemed too obvious to test—whether ant colonies suffer after being raided by slavemaker ants—suggests that some of the raiding insects have been getting unfair press.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    DNA vaccine immunizes fetal lambs

    Canadian scientists have devised a way to vaccinate fetal lambs, which could spawn more research into in utero methods for preventing the spread of disease from mothers to their babies.

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  3. Astronomy

    Young pulsar has a split personality

    A new pulsar, the youngest discovered to date, unexpectedly exhibits properties of both regular pulsars and a recently explored class of supermagnetic pulsars, the magnetars.

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  4. Study explores abortion’s mental aftermath

    A majority of women report no increase in psychological problems after having an abortion, although nearly one in five express dissatisfaction and regret 2 years later about their decision.

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  5. Skin cells reveal they have hairy origins

    The outer layers of the skin may spring from cells in hair follicles.

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  6. Tech

    Nanotechnologists get a squirt gun, almost

    A novel computer simulation of molecular behavior suggests that a minuscule squirt gun able to spit liquids a few hundred nanometers ought to work.

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  7. Paleontology

    Feathered fossil still stirs debate

    More than 2 years after scientists first described 120-million-year-old fossils of a feathered animal, a new analysis seems to bolster the view that the turkey-size species was a bird has-been and not a bird wanna-be.

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  8. Astronomy

    Telescope takes close-ups of distant star

    Radio astronomers have for the first time probed ejected gas in the immediate surroundings of a distant star.

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  9. Physics

    Answer blows in wind, swirls in soap

    A swirling soap film gives new clues to how turbulent flows, such as the circulation of Earth's atmosphere, squander their energy.

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  10. Older isn’t wiser in moral reasoning

    Researchers find more endorsement of immanent justice, the belief that the natural world punishes human misdeeds, among college students than sixth-graders.

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  11. In gauging beauty, congeniality counts

    People judge others who have positive personality traits by more lenient physical criteria for attractiveness than they do those about whom they have no personality information.

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  12. Feedback matters for getting the joke

    Plausible information about how others react to jokes colors a college student's own perception of the humor value of the material.

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  13. Health & Medicine

    Genes of cholera germ deciphered

    The bacterium that causes cholera has nearly 4,000 genes on its two circular chromosomes.

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  14. Health & Medicine

    Microbes implicated in heart disease

    Viruses and bacteria besides chlamydia may play a role in human heart disease through an immune reaction to a heartlike protein they produce.

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  15. Health & Medicine

    Antibiotic for Huntington’s disease?

    In mice genetically engineered to develop an illness similar to Huntington's disease, the drug minocycline significantly delays the onset of symptoms and death.

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  16. Computing

    Strength and weakness in diversity

    Although the Internet's redundancy and diversity help it survive local node malfunctions despite its vast size and complexity, it is vulnerable to attacks aimed specifically at the most highly connected nodes.

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  17. Computing

    Computer grid cracks problem

    A large network of powerful computers solved a 32-year-old optimization challenge known as the "nug30" quadratic assignment problem.

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  18. Computing

    Tight packaging for digitized surfaces

    A novel digital compression scheme may make it practical to transmit detailed models of three-dimensional surfaces over the Internet.

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  19. Physics

    To pack a strand tight, make it a helix

    The optimal way to pack long strings into small spaces is to coil them into helices—particularly the types of helices found in proteins and perhaps DNA.

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  20. Materials Science

    The New Cavity Fighters

    Novel products could lead to fewer dates with the drill.

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  21. Health & Medicine

    Infectious Notion

    Lessons from gene therapy promote viruses as cancer fighters.

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