More Stories from the May 18, 2013 issue
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PhysicsSound cloaks enter the third dimension
Concept could lead to sonar-defeating submarines or noise-cancelling highway barriers.
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Life
Molecule in meat may increase heart disease risk
Gut bacteria transform compound into artery hardener.
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Health & Medicine
Ovarian cancer drug candidate passes early clinical test
An experimental medicine that uses a seek-and-destroy design to kill tumor cells may help some patients who face a recurrence.
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Life
A giant tortoise by any other name
Long, heated battle ends with a moniker for the Indian Ocean reptile.
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Life
New technique gives see-through view into mouse brains
Replacing fatty molecules turns organs transparent, allowing study of structure and function at the same time.
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Humans
Pottery cooked from the start
Japanese sites yield late Stone Age evidence of people heating fish in ceramic vessels.
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Physics
Light journeys unimpeded along material’s surface
A topological insulator for photons, exotic etched glass could improve optics-based communications.
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Health & Medicine
Mental puzzles underlie music’s delight
MRI reveals brain’s processing, and its pleasure, when a person listens to an enjoyable new tune.
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Humans
Ardi’s kind had a skull fit for a hominid
Study of reconstructed skull section puts 4.4-million-year-old species in human evolutionary family.
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Anthropology
American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting
Perhaps the oldest swatch of hominid skin yet found and –tzi the iceman’s Neandertal genetics are among the highlights from the physical anthropology meeting.
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Cosmology
Dark matter detector reports hints of WIMPs
Experiment hundreds of meters underground detects three candidate signs of dark matter, though physicists are cautious about the finding.
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Health & Medicine
Bioengineered kidney transplanted into rat
Cleansed of cells and repopulated anew, bioengineered organ successfully produces urine.
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Health & Medicine
Colic in infancy linked to migraines later in childhood
No tie found between colicky babies and later tension headaches.
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Life
Coelacanth is not closest fishy relative of terrestrial animals
Genes of “living fossil” do reveal changes needed to live on dry land.
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Astronomy
Most Earthlike planets yet seen bring Kepler closer to its holy grail
Space telescope finds globes that, compared with our world, are slightly larger and orbit a smaller star.
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Space
American Physical Society meeting
A supernova’s remnants possibly showing up in fossils and an explanation for the Crab Nebula are among highlights from the physics meeting.
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Earth
Yangtze’s age revealed
Geologists narrow window on time of the Chinese river’s origin to 23-36 million years ago.
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Earth
Remnants of Earth’s crust survive in the planet’s interior
A slab stayed unperturbed in the mantle for billions of years before resurfacing, sulfur measurements suggest.
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Space
Comet’s water still hanging around on Jupiter
Shoemaker-Levy 9 supplied almost all of aqueous part of the planet's upper atmosphere.
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Earth
The ice keeper
DENVER — “I’m a little tired of the cold,” Geoff Hargreaves says with a sigh. Vasileios Gkinis of the University of Colorado Boulder examines layers in an ice core that reveal environmental changes over time. Gifford Wong/Wais Jeff Kanipe No surprise there: Hargreaves works in a deep freeze — 38 degrees Celsius below zero (−36° […]
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SN Online
GENES & CELLS See a roundup of some of the latest discoveries about China’s H7N9 virus in “ New bird flu claims more victims .” ENVIRONMENT Lake Erie is loaded with tiny pieces of plastic containing toxic pollutants. Read “Puny plastic particles mar Lake Erie’s waters.” HUMANS Male attractiveness relies on a combination of body […]
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Upcoming events
May 29 The World Science Festival opens in New York City. Learn more at bit.ly/SFwsf2013 May 31 Learn about wildflowers at Botany Washington at Seattle’s Burke Museum. See bit.ly/SFwf2013 June 2 Get tips on model rocket construction and safety at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. See bit.ly/SFrocket
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EarthSpinning the Core
Laboratory dynamos attempt to generate magnetic fields the way planets and stars do.
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Letters to the editor
Ethics of humanized mice The recent stories “Human cells rev up mouse brains” (SN: 4/6/13, p. 16) and “Of mice and man” (SN: 3/23/13, p. 22) drove home to me that human-animal hybrids are now reality. In science fiction stories with such hybrids, a big part of the plot is the resultant ethical gray area: […]
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Whistling noises give news from atmosphere
The atmosphere whistles while scientists work. Series of whistles — short or long, going up scale or down — keep radio scientists busy deciphering their messages of the density of charged particles in the outer regions of the earth’s atmosphere.… Generated by lightning as it strikes the earth, the radio waves are propagated back and […]
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