Vol. 158 No. #24
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More Stories from the December 9, 2000 issue

  1. Planetary Science

    Mars Views Hint at Early Land of Lakes

    New, high-resolution images unveiled this week not only offer supporting evidence that parts of ancient Mars resembled a land of lakes but also point out prime locations to look for fossils if life ever existed on the Red Planet.

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  2. Tech

    Tiny tubes could ease eavesdropping

    A team of researchers is developing highly sensitive acoustic sensors using ordered arrays of carbon nanotubes, which act much like the rodlike stereocilia of the inner ear.

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  3. Language goes beyond sight, sound in brain

    Two brain areas long considered crucial for perceiving and speaking words also spring into action in deaf people who are using sign language or watching others do so.

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  4. Earth

    Chalk reveals greatest underwater landslide

    Seismic waves generated by an extraterrestrial object crashing into Mexico 65 million years ago appear to have sent sediment from shallow waters sliding off the continental shelf.

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  5. Paleontology

    Fossil birds sport a new kind of feather

    Two fossil specimens of a primitive, starling-size bird that lived about 125 million years ago have tail feathers that may hold the clues to how feathers originated.

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  6. Materials Science

    Anyone want to knit a microscopic sweater?

    Microscopic polymer tubes can tangle themselves into a new and possibly useful structure—tiny "yarn balls" that flatten out and partly unravel in an electric field.

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  7. Earth

    Lemon-scented products spawn pollutants

    Some fragrances used in home-care products can play a role in generating potentially harmful air pollution.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Drug aids destruction of lymphoma cells

    The drug rituximab, when added to chemotherapy, boosts survival rates in people with diffuse B-cell lymphoma, a kind of cancer.

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  9. Crippled fungus acts as vaccine

    A genetically crippled strain of yeast can vaccinate mice against deadly normal strains.

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  10. Astronomy

    What a blast!

    Astronomers have glimpsed a rare, long-lived neutron-star explosion that may represent the burning of carbon just beneath the surface of this superdense star.

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  11. Astronomy

    More moons for Saturn

    With the discovery of two additional moons, the ringed planet now has a retinue of 24 known satellites orbiting it.

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  12. Brain sets sights on mind’s eye

    Brain regions implicated in vision may also contribute to the images in the "mind's eye."

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  13. Man’s brain incurs disgusting loss

    A brain-damaged man yields clues to the neural organization responsible for experiencing disgust.

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  14. Health & Medicine

    Is penicillin-allergy rate overstated?

    A study finds that 20 of 21 people who reported having a penicillin allergy when filling out paperwork during a hospital visit in fact don't have one, suggesting that the prevalence of this allergy is overstated.

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  15. Health & Medicine

    Marker signals esophageal cancer

    Silencing of the gene that encodes the cancer-suppressing protein APC is common in people with esophageal cancer, suggesting that physicians might use this genetic abnormality as a marker for the disease.

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  16. Physics

    When all is a spin, calm is dragged in

    When laboratory vortices are mixed to create the equivalent of a tornado in a hurricane, the "hurricane" may gobble up spots of calm from the outside world.

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  17. Physics

    Hot little levers write beaucoup bits

    Arrays of microscopic tips may offer a way to pack digital data more tightly and transfer it more quickly than is possible with magnetic hard disks.

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  18. Physics

    Particle hunt off, collider comes down

    Despite tantalizing, last-minute hints of a long-sought, mass-giving particle called the Higgs boson, dismantling of the Large Electron-Positron collider has begun.

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  19. Materials Science

    Making Stuff Last

    Chemistry and materials science step up to preserve history, old and new.

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  20. Health & Medicine

    Weight Matters, Even in the Womb

    Status at birth can foreshadow illnesses decades later.

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