Vol. 172 No. #23
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More Stories from the December 8, 2007 issue

  1. Health & Medicine

    Malaria’s new guises

    Scientists have observed Plasmodium falciparum enjoying three distinct lifestyles—two of which have never been seen before—in the blood of infected children.

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  2. Humans

    Divorce is not ecofriendly

    Divorce often takes a devastating toll on families, but it has significant impacts on the environment as well.

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  3. Health & Medicine

    Diabetes drug shows new potential

    Exendin-4 (exenatide) might complement a drug called anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody in reversing type 1 diabetes, a study in mice shows.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    Putting tumors on pause

    Keeping benign breast tumors from progressing into a malignant cancer can be achieved in mice by reducing a signaling protein.

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  5. Humans

    Strategies to improve teaching

    Incorporating emerging data on how kids learn and cement ideas could help schools teach science more effectively, a new report argues.

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  6. Tech

    Tractor beam

    Magnetic nanoparticles selectively bind to specific bacteria and can drag them out of a liquid.

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  7. Physics

    Sharper than expected

    A new technique beats the resolution limits of ordinary microscopes in a way that seems to defy conventional optical theory.

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  8. Plants

    Botanists refine family tree for flowering plants

    Two research teams have used the biggest array of flowering-plant genes yet to try to reconstruct the elusive evolutionary history of today's flowers.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Sickle Save: Skin cells fix anemia in mice

    Using a new technique to turn skin cells into stem cells, scientists have corrected sickle cell anemia in mice.

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  10. Chimp Champ: Ape aces memory test, outscores people

    A young chimp outperforms college students on a test of recalling numbers glimpsed for less than a quarter of a second. With video.

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  11. Earth

    The Salt Flat That Isn’t Flat: World’s largest playa sports ridges, valleys

    An innovative field survey of the world's largest salt flat, a New Jersey–size playa high in the Andes, reveals that the barren expanse actually has minuscule, centimeter-scale variations in topography.

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  12. Physics

    15 = 3 × 5: Photons do their first quantum math

    Physicists have performed the first calculation involving manipulation of the quantum states of photons, another step on the road to optical quantum computers.

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  13. Health & Medicine

    Angiogenesis Factors: Tracking down the suspects in blood vessel growth near tumors

    Tumors enlist certain bone marrow cells in efforts to grow new blood vessels for self-nourishment.

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  14. Perchlorate Pump: Molecule draws contaminant into breast milk

    A molecular pump meant to transport iodine also concentrates perchlorate, an environmental pollutant, in breast milk.

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  15. Planetary Science

    A sunlike star’s early development

    A new infrared portrait of an embryonic sunlike star reveals an early, crucial step in the process of planet formation.

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  16. Archaeology

    Muons Meet the Maya

    Physicists are exploring the use of muons generated by cosmic rays to explore Mayan archaeological sites and to probe the interiors of volcanoes and shipping containers.

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  17. Agriculture

    Lettuce Liability

    A new industry program to self-regulate most salad producers is forcing affected farmers to choose between adopting measures unfriendly to wildlife and a loss of major markets for their greens.

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  18. Humans

    Letters from the December 8, 2007, issue of Science News

    Errors of biblical proportions “Lazarus taxa” is an appropriate name for species that seem to have been resurrected (“Back from the Dead?” SN: 11/17/07, p. 312). However, the Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead was a householder who lived with his sisters, Mary and Martha, in Bethany (John 11). The beggar named Lazarus appeared […]

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