Vol. 166 No. #9
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More Stories from the August 28, 2004 issue

  1. Tech

    A new deep-sea submersible

    Scientists have announced a 4-year, $21.6-million design-and-construction effort to replace the aging research submersible Alvin.

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  2. Animals

    How dingoes got down under

    DNA analysis suggests that Australia got its famous dingoes from a very few dogs brought along with people fanning out from East Asia some 5,000 years ago.

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  3. Some corals like it hotter

    The heat-tolerant algae that live symbiotically within some corals may enable their hosts to adapt to the warmer water temperatures projected to accompany long-term climate change.

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  4. Planetary Science

    Martian ice could be sculpting surface patterns

    Images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor suggest that most areas with geological features known as patterned ground appear at high latitudes.

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  5. Animals

    Policing egg laying in insect colonies

    Kinship by itself can't explain the vigilante justice of some ant, bee, and wasp workers.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    Bright nights kindle cancers in mice

    Data from mice subjected to constant illumination suggest that artificial light may increase risks of lung and liver cancers and leukemia.

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  7. Brain protein peps up and soothes rodents

    A recently identified brain hormone increases wakefulness and appears to suppress fear when it's injected into rodents.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Vitamin may guard against mental decline

    The B vitamin niacin may protect people against Alzheimer's disease and other forms of mental decline.

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  9. Materials Science

    Face to Face: Crystal-growth method bodes electric payoff

    A new method for growing silicon carbide eliminates crystal defects that have long prevented the compound's wider use in electric devices.

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  10. Earth

    Rounding Up Resistance: Weed sacrifices seeds to put up with a herbicide

    Use of herbicides containing glyphosate can drive evolution in the tall morning glory, even though the weed must simultaneously sacrifice a measure of its fertility.

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  11. Astronomy

    Super Portrait: X-ray telescope eyes supernova remnant

    Trained on Cassiopeia A for 11.5 days, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has taken the most detailed portrait ever recorded of any supernova remnant.

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  12. Ringing Out Despair: Phone therapy gets call as depression buster

    Psychotherapy delivered over the telephone shows promise as a depression treatment when offered in conjunction with prescribed antidepressant medication.

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  13. Earth

    North and South: Equal melting from each hemisphere raised ice age sea levels

    The gargantuan volumes of meltwater that boosted sea levels during the most recent round of ice ages derived equally from ice sheets in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

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  14. Earth

    There’s a Catch: Recreation takes toll on marine fish

    Recreational fishing isn't just a tiny, harmless nibble on saltwater-fish populations.

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  15. Health & Medicine

    Keeping Cells under Control: Enzyme suppression inhibits cancer spread

    Shutting down an enzyme can slow the spread of cancer in mice.

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  16. Math

    A Better Distorted View

    The mathematics used to describe diffusion can also be used to generate maps based on population data.

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  17. Plants

    Smokey the Gardener

    Wildfire smoke by itself, without help from heat, can trigger germination in certain seeds, but just what the vital compound in that smoke might be has kept biologists busy for years.

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