Vol. 160 No. #1
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More Stories from the July 7, 2001 issue

  1. Health & Medicine

    Insight into preemies’ blindness

    Lack of a growth factor called IGF-1 has been implicated as a trigger for a disease that can cause vision problems, including blindness, in premature babies.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Vitamin E benefits cattle, too

    Vitamin E aids immune system function and prevents growth declines in cattle, offering an alternative to potentially dangerous use of low-dose antibiotics.

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  3. Earth

    Blood points to pollution’s heart risks

    As airborne concentrations of fine dust particles climb, so do three blood factors that increase an individual's heart attack risk.

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  4. Earth

    A foamy threat to ozone

    Shredding the foam insulation in discarded refrigerators can release significant quantities of chlorofluorocarbons, which pose a threat to Earth's protective ozone layer.

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  5. Killer yeast win epic battle of toxins

    Researchers have discovered the molecular mechanism that keeps a yeast cell programed by a virus to spew a toxin that kills neighboring yeast cells from killing itself.

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  6. Textbooks brace for nuclear challenge

    New data threaten to shake up 30 years of scientific dogma regarding how a cell carries out one of its most basic tasks: the translation of the genetic code into proteins.

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  7. Earth

    Landfills Make Mercury More Toxic

    Landfill disposal of mercury-containing products can chemically transform the pollutant not only to make it more potent but also to foster its release into air.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Have a heart: Turn on just a single gene

    One gene appears to act as the master switch in embryonic heart formation.

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  9. Earth

    Is Nessie merely a bad case of the shakes?

    An Italian scientist makes the controversial suggestion that the original source of the legend of the Loch Ness Monster, as well as blame for many of the modern encounters with the supposed beast, may be seismic activity beneath the lake.

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  10. Astronomy

    Andromeda feasts on its satellite galaxies

    A new study reveals that the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way, is a cannibal, devouring its tiny galactic neighbors.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    Nicotine spurs vessel growth, maybe cancer

    Test-tube and mouse experiments show that nicotine induces angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels.

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  12. Tree pollen exploits surrogate mothers

    An Algerian cypress releases pollen that can develop without fertilization, using another tree species' female organs instead of a mate's.

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  13. Humans

    Physicist steps up to be science adviser

    President Bush has announced that he intends to nominate John Marburger, the head of Brookhaven National Laboratory, as his science advisor.

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  14. Archaeology

    Stone Age folk in Asia adapted to extremes

    Preliminary evidence indicates that people occupied the harsh, high-altitude environment of Asia's Tibetan Plateau in the late Stone Age, between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago.

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  15. Chemistry

    Wee dots yield rainbow of molecule markers

    Chemists report a scheme for creating a versatile color-based tagging system out of tiny atomic clusters, called quantum dots, that may enable scientists to track biomolecules with more finesse than ever.

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  16. Faces of Perception

    Scientists who study face perception currently disagree strongly over whether newborn babies innately know what human faces look like and whether certain brain areas are solely responsible for distinguishing one face from another.

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  17. Telltale Heart

    Genetics is revealing the first steps in building a heart—the organ that is first to develop, subject to the most birth defects, and difficult to heal when damaged later in life.

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