Vol. 187 No. 11

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More Stories from the May 30, 2015 issue

  1. Ovaries
    Health & Medicine

    Why cancer patients waste away

    A tumor-produced protein that interferes with insulin causes wasting in fruit flies with cancer.

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  2. leg bone
    Anthropology

    Ritual cannibalism occurred in England 14,700 years ago

    Human bones show signs of ritual cannibalism in England 14,700 years ago.

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  3. Chilesaurus
    Paleontology

    ‘Frankenstein’ dinosaur was a mash-up of meat eater and plant eater

    Fossils of a bizarre-looking dinosaur found in Chile are challenging ideas about how dinosaurs adapted to their environments.

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  4. Amazon rainforest
    Ecosystems

    Just 1 percent of Amazon’s trees hold half of its carbon

    Roughly 1 percent of tree species in the Amazon rainforest account for half of the jungle’s carbon storage.

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  5. Bullying
    Psychology

    Childhood bullying leads to long-term mental health problems

    U.S., British data raise bullying’s profile as a long-term mental health hazard for kids.

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  6. the sun in UV
    Astronomy

    Tiny explosions add up to heat corona

    Millions of mini-explosions every second on the sun could solve the riddle of why the sun’s atmosphere is so much warmer than its surface.

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  7. Lightning illuminates the sky during a storm in Weld County, Colo.
    Earth

    Cosmic rays illuminate lightning

    Radio waves emitted by particles zipping through thunderstorms allow physicists to probe thunderclouds and, perhaps eventually, learn what triggers lightning strikes.

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  8. Yi qi
    Paleontology

    This dinosaur’s ride may have been a glide

    A new dino called Yi qi may have taken to the skies with wings akin to those of pterosaurs and flying squirrels.

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  9. Genetics

    DNA disorganization linked to aging

    Changes in the way that DNA is tightly packed in cells leads to mayhem that promotes the aging process.

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  10. effects of radiation on the brain
    Neuroscience

    Zipping to Mars could badly zap brain nerve cells

    Charged particles like the ones astronauts might encounter wallop the brain, mouse study suggests.

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  11. thunder image
    Physics

    Scientists take first picture of thunder

    Scientists precisely capture thunder sound waves radiating from artificially triggered lightning.

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  12. seafloor map
    Microbes

    Possible nearest living relatives to complex life found in seafloor mud

    New phylum of sea-bottom archaea microbes could be closest living relatives yet found to the eukaryote domain of complex life that includes people.

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  13. germline editing
    Genetics

    Editing human germline cells sparks ethics debate

    Human gene editing experiments raise scientific and societal questions.

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  14. gram staining bacteria
    Chemistry

    Bacteria staining method has long been misexplained

    New research upends what scientists know about a classic lab technique, called gram staining, used for more than a century to characterized and classify bacteria.

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  15. Measels shot
    Health & Medicine

    Kids who have had measles are at higher risk of fatal infections

    Measles infection leaves kids vulnerable to other infectious diseases for much longer than scientists suspected.

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  16. ocean sediment cores
    Climate

    Rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide rise unprecedented

    The current rate of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere is unprecedented over at least the last 66 million years, new research shows.

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  17. Quantum Physics

    Quantum experiment dissects wave-particle mash-up

    A modified version of a landmark quantum physics experiment has shown that a single parcel of light can be a particle and a wave simultaneously.

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  18. Vampire squid of hell
    Animals

    Vampire squid take mommy breaks

    The vampire squid again defies its sensationalist name with a life in the slow lane.

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  19. hawthorn hedge row
    Plants

    The art and science of the hedgerow

    Spiky hawthorn trees have found many uses despite their unforgiving nature, Bill Vaughn writes in ‘Hawthorn.’

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  20. abandoned factory in Chernobyl
    Science & Society

    Histories left behind by the dispossessed

    ‘Dispatches from Dystopia’ chronicles adventures in modernist wastelands to recount tales of the invisible and the overlooked, the exiled and the dispossessed.

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  21. REM Cat
    Animals

    Early research asked whether cats dream

    Early research asked whether cats dream; researchers still don’t know definitively.

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