Vol. 183 No. #10

More Stories from the May 18, 2013 issue

  1. Physics

    Sound cloaks enter the third dimension

    Concept could lead to sonar-defeating submarines or noise-cancelling highway barriers.

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  2. Life

    Molecule in meat may increase heart disease risk

    Gut bacteria transform compound into artery hardener.

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  3. 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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  4. Life

    A giant tortoise by any other name

    Long, heated battle ends with a moniker for the Indian Ocean reptile.

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  5. 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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  6. Humans

    Pottery cooked from the start

    Japanese sites yield late Stone Age evidence of people heating fish in ceramic vessels.

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  7. 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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  8. 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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  9. 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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  10. 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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  11. 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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  12. Health & Medicine

    Bioengineered kidney transplanted into rat

    Cleansed of cells and repopulated anew, bioengineered organ successfully produces urine.

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  13. 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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  14. 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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  15. Life

    Bats are 3-D cartographers

    Special cells in the mammal’s brain chart its path as it flies.

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  16. 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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  17. 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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  18. 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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  19. 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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  20. 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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  21. 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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  22. 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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  23. 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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  24. Science & Society

    A Renaissance Globemaker’s Toolbox

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  25. Science & Society

    Between Man and Beast

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  26. Physics

    A Palette of Particles by Jeremy Bernstein

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  27. Anthropology

    Paleofantasy

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  28. Health & Medicine

    Gulp

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  29. Animals

    Evolutionary enigmas

    Comb jelly genetics suggest a radical redrawing of the tree of life.

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  30. dynamo experiment
    Earth

    Spinning the Core

    Laboratory dynamos attempt to generate magnetic fields the way planets and stars do.

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  31. 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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  32. 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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  33. Neuroscience

    Pieces of Light

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