Vol. 167 No. #6
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More Stories from the February 5, 2005 issue

  1. Health & Medicine

    A drink a day might keep fuzzy thinking away

    One alcoholic drink per day can stave off mental decline in elderly women.

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  2. Astronomy

    Hubble views bar in galaxy

    The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a strikingly detailed image of the starlit arms, glowing gas, and dark dust clouds of a barred spiral galaxy called NGC 1300, which lies 69 million light-years from Earth.

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  3. A new test for Alzheimer’s risk?

    Failure in visual short-term memory of objects, called iconic memory, could be a warning sign of Alzheimer's disease.

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  4. Math

    Hospitals motivated to skimp on infection control

    A new mathematical model suggests that the presence of nearby hospitals may give a hospital an economic incentive to relax its infection-control efforts.

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  5. Earth

    Ozone saps toads’ immune systems

    In amphibians, ozone damages immune function in the lungs, suggesting a possible new contributor to worldwide amphibian declines.

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  6. Earth

    Ice age hit Missouri 2.4 million years ago

    Analyses of a soil sample from central Missouri suggest the date of onset of North America's most recent spate of ice ages.

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  7. Drugs lengthen worm’s life span

    A class of antiseizure drugs significantly extends the life span of roundworms, a finding that could lead to better understanding of factors that influence aging in people.

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  8. Tech

    Detecting life on Mars

    A new device could look for life on Mars by analyzing the geometric traits of amino acids in soil.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Disease Detector: Chemical test may spot Alzheimer’s

    A new test that detects very low levels of protein clumps associated with Alzheimer's may provide an early warning for the disease.

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  10. Astronomy

    Puny Parent? Planets may form around tiny orbs

    Barely more massive than a planet itself, a tiny failed star 500 light-years from Earth is nonetheless cloaked in a disk of gas and dust from which planets may coalesce.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    When Ebola Looms: Human outbreaks follow animal infections

    A network of organizations in an African region prone to Ebola epidemics has identified the virus in wild-animal remains prior to two recent human outbreaks, suggesting that animal carcasses may provide timely clues that could prevent the disease from spreading to people.

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  12. A Bug’s Life: E. coli can’t escape old age

    Bacteria that divide symmetrically, once thought to be functionally immortal, may age and die just like other organisms do.

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  13. Health & Medicine

    There’s the Rub: Football abrasions can lead to nasty infections

    U.S. football players who get scrapes and cuts from playing on artificial turf sometimes develop bacterial infections that are resistant to some antibiotics.

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  14. Materials Science

    Petrified wood: Quick and easy

    Materials scientists have turned wood into stone in a matter of days, mimicking a natural process that takes millions of years.

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  15. Animals

    Bad Breath: Insects zip air holes to cut oxygen risks

    The need to avoid overdosing on oxygen may drive certain insects to shut down their breathing holes periodically.

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  16. Tech

    Outsmarting the Electronic Gatekeeper: Code breakers beat security scheme of car locks, gas pumps

    Because designers flouted a well-known rule for making cryptographic systems impenetrable, automakers and other businesses have embraced a wireless security technology that's vulnerable to attack.

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  17. Anthropology

    Cultivating Revolutions

    New studies suggest that farmers spread from the Middle East throughout Europe beginning around 10,000 years ago in a multitude of small migrations that rapidly changed the continent's social and cultural landscape.

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  18. Health & Medicine

    Dangerous Practices

    Pharmaceutical companies' overaggressive marketing of risky drugs, compounded by conflicts of interest among physicians and government agencies, is hurting public safety, some researchers assert.

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  19. Humans

    Letters from the February 5, 2005, issue of Science News

    Not measuring up I love Science News. Now and then, however, you write in terms that aren’t understandable to the average reader. I refer in particular to “Snow Blow: Image of Mount Everest from orbit captures enormous plume” (SN: 12/4/04, p. 358). It states that “weather models suggest winds atop the peak exceeded 50 meters […]

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