Vol. 185 No. 6
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Life

The Monkey’s Voyage

By 26 million years ago, the ancestors of today’s New World monkeys had arrived in South America. How those primates reached the continent is something of a conundrum.

Science Visualized

Features

  • The addiction paradox

    Addiction is often seen as a chronic disease that requires maintenance treatment even after years of sobriety. But even without help, most addicts eventually can quit for good.

  • Cloudy forecast

    Over decades climatologists have grown more confident in their projections of the future impact of greenhouse gas emissions. But whether shifts in cloudiness will amplify global warming continues to vex researchers.

More Stories from the March 22, 2014 issue

  1. Animals

    Windows may kill up to 988 million birds a year in the United States

    Single-family homes and low-rise buildings do much more damage than skyscrapers.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Vitamin C could give chemo a boost

    Injected into mice, the supplement helped anticancer drugs shrink tumors.

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  3. Materials Science

    Scientists throw crystals a curve

    Particles inside a sphere assemble into ordered ribbons, not lumps.

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  4. Genetics

    When flowers died out in Arctic, so did mammoths

    Genetic analysis finds vegetation change in the Arctic around same time as megafauna extinction.

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  5. Climate

    Strong winds may have waylaid global warming

    Gusts over the Pacific Ocean may have stashed heat underwater since 2001.

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  6. Animals

    Embryos in eggs move to get comfy

    Even before hatching, Chinese alligators, snapping turtles and some relatives can shift toward favorable temperatures.

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  7. Archaeology

    Nearly 1-million-year-old European footprints found

    Erosion temporarily unveils remnants of a Stone Age stroll along England’s coast.

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  8. Humans

    Clovis baby’s genome unveils Native American ancestry

    DNA from skeleton shows all tribes come from a single population.

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  9. Tech

    Termite-inspired robots build structures without central command

    Simple guidelines keep machines hauling and placing bricks.

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  10. Animals

    In crazy vs. fire, the ant with the detox dance wins

    Tawny crazy ants pick fights with fire ants and win, thanks to a previously unknown way of detoxifying fire ant venom.

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  11. Math

    Goldberg variations: New shapes for molecular cages

    Scientists have figured a way to iron out the wrinkles in a large class of molecular cages.

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  12. Earth

    Magma spends most of its existence as sludgy mush

    Volcanic magma may spend most of its time in a chunky state resembling cold porridge, a new study finds.

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  13. Psychology

    Stress hormone rise linked to less risky financial decisions

    People given cortisol chose safer options, suggesting inherent risk aversion as an overlooked variable in financial crises.

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  14. Health & Medicine

    Highlights from the International Stroke Conference

    Clotting risk after pregnancy, driving after a stroke and more presented February 12-14 in San Diego.

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  15. Astronomy

    While exploding, supernovas not spherical

    X-rays reveal uneven allotment of element made by blowup.

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  16. Neuroscience

    Like people, dogs have brain areas that respond to voices

    MRI study may help explain how pups understand human communication.

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  17. Animals

    Pelican spiders: slow, safe assassins

    Spiders, thank goodness, haven’t evolved assassin drones. But the specialized hunters of the family Archaeidae can kill at a distance.

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  18. Microbes

    Osmotroph

    An organism that eats by osmosis, relying on nutrients diffusing into its body from a higher concentration in its environment.

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  19. Math

    Our Mathematical Universe

    Math is everywhere: medicine, sports, banking, gambling, National Security Agency espionage.

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  20. Psychology

    How string quartets stay together

    New data tracking millisecond-scale corrections suggests that some ensembles are more autocratic — following one leader —while other musical groups are more democratic, making corrections equally.

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  21. Ecosystems

    Do your bit for bumblebees

    The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and its partners have launched the Bumble Bee Watch website to track sightings. When you see a bee bumbling around, snap a photo.

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