Vol. 172 No. #19
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More Stories from the November 10, 2007 issue

  1. Tech

    Hooking up

    Cleverly designed molecules can self-assemble into networks and stay robustly connected.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Earache microbe shows resistance

    A strain of bacterium that causes middle ear infection is resistant to all antibiotics currently approved for the ailment.

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  3. Earth

    Groundwater use adds CO2 to the air

    Pumping out groundwater for crop irrigation or industrial purposes releases planet-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    Salmonella seeks sweets

    A sugarlike substance in the roots of lettuce may attract food-poisoning bacteria.

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  5. Humans

    Burdens of knowledge

    Greater understanding of the role of genetics in human diseases presents scientists with ethical dilemmas.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    Nongene DNA boosts AIDS risk

    People with a newly discovered genetic variation are more vulnerable to HIV infection.

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  7. Doing the DNA shuffle

    DNA near the ends of people's chromosomes shows surprisingly large differences from the corresponding DNA in other great apes.

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  8. Smarty Gene: Breast-fed kids show DNA-aided IQ boost

    Breast-feeding substantially boosts children's intelligence, but only if the youngsters possess a specific version of a gene involved in processing mothers' milk.

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  9. Astronomy

    Ray Tracing: Energetic cosmic rays linked to giant black holes

    New observations suggest that ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays originate in the cores of nearby galaxies harboring supermassive black holes.

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  10. Agriculture

    Silencing Pests: Altered plants make RNA that keeps insects at bay

    Engineered plants make genetic material that disables critical genes in insects that eat the plants, offering a possible new strategy for agricultural-pest control.

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  11. Not Like Clockwork: High-fat diet disrupts daily routines of mice

    Fatty diets disrupt the sleep and metabolic cycles of mice by changing the activity of genes.

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  12. Earth

    Yellowstone Rising: Magma floods into chamber beneath park

    Some parts of the terrain in Yellowstone National Park have been rising as much as 7 centimeters per year as molten rock wells up beneath the park.

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  13. Ladies First: Genes skew sex ratios in evolutionary struggle

    A gene in fruit flies favors the birth of females, until another gene comes along to restore balance between the sexes.

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  14. Animals

    Mr. Not Wrong: Not my species? Not a problem

    Female toads that accept mates of another species in tough times may be looking after their own interest.

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  15. Health & Medicine

    Mother Knows All

    Fragments of a fetus' genetic material that leak into a pregnant woman's bloodstream reveal details of early fetal development.

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  16. Ecosystems

    Tortoise Genes and Island Beings

    Geneticists and conservation biologists are joining forces to untangle the evolutionary history of giant Galápagos tortoises and to safeguard the animals' future.

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  17. Humans

    Letters from the November 10, 2007, issue of Science News

    Thinking it through Bjorn Merker says that “the tacit consensus concerning the cerebral cortex as the ‘organ of consciousness’ … may in fact be seriously in error” (“Consciousness in the Raw,” SN: 9/15/07, p. 170). But the real tacit consensus is that the cerebral cortex is the organ of conceptual consciousness, of thinking and reasoning, […]

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