Vol. 164 No. #19
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More Stories from the November 8, 2003 issue

  1. Earth

    Seals’ meals, plastic pieces and all

    Bite-size pieces of plastic chipped from wave-battered consumer products work their way up marine food chains, suggests a study of fur seals in Australia.

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  2. Planetary Science

    Bone-dry Mars?

    The presence of large amounts of olivine, a mineral that undergoes rapid chemical transformation when exposed to liquid water, argues against ancient oceans or lakes on Mars.

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  3. Underwater balancing act

    Researchers have identified a gene that influences the growth of crystals in the inner ears of zebrafish and found that modifying this gene can cause the fish to lose their sense of gravity.

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  4. Earth

    POPs treaty enacted

    A new United Nations treaty that seeks to phase down or eliminate production and use of 16 persistent, toxic pollutants has gone into effect.

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  5. Earth

    Pollutants shape baby-gator gonads

    The same pollutants that appear to shorten the length of a grown-alligator's phallus actually lead to this organ's lengthening in baby gators.

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  6. Earth

    Sewage linked to fish-gender quirks

    Releases from sewage treatment plants appear to impair reproductive tissues in fish.

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  7. Earth

    UV-pollutant combo hits tadpoles hard

    Coincident exposure to ultraviolet light and an estrogen-mimicking pollutant severely jeopardized the chance a tadpole would reach adulthood.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Soy compounds thwart estrogen

    Soy-stress compound interferes with estrogen activity, possibly pointing the way to a new breast-cancer drug.

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  9. Earth

    Cast-Iron Foot: Undersea snail has mineral armor

    An as-yet-unnamed species of snail living around hydrothermal vents deep beneath the Indian Ocean bears a suit of armor forged from the minerals dissolved in the hot fluids that spew from its seafloor environment.

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  10. Astronomy

    Hot and Heavy Star Birth: Young cosmos delivers massive stars

    Aided by a gravitational zoom lens, astronomers have discovered the hottest, brightest, and most crowded star-forming region ever observed.

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  11. Getting Back to Normal: Protein enables the liver to regenerate quickly

    A protein called stem cell factor enables the liver to regenerate and may even protect people from acute liver failure.

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  12. Earth

    Frosty Florida: Spread of agriculture may promote freezes

    Planting crops in south Florida may have increased the risk of the freezes farmers hoped to avoid.

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  13. Forgetting to Remember: Emotion robs memory while reviving it

    A common biological mechanism may boost memory for emotional events and block recall for what happened just before those events occurred, at least over the short run.

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  14. Calcium Makes Germs Cluster: Ion dilution leads cholera bacteria to disperse

    A protein on the surface of cholera-causing bacteria enables the pathogens to clump together in seawater and to scatter when they enter fresh water, perhaps facilitating seasonal outbreaks of cholera in coastal areas.

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  15. Animals

    Not-So-Great Hunter: Said the spider to the fly—Eek! I’m outta here

    The poisonous brown recluse spider may turn out not to be a fearsome hunter so much as a scavenger.

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  16. Earth

    Chemical Reaction: Two flame retardants to phase out in 2004

    The sole U.S. manufacturer of two widely used brominated fire retardants pledged to phase out its production of both products by the end of next year.

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  17. Humans

    Letters

    Letters from the Nov. 8, 2003, issue of Science News.

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  18. Math

    The Shape of Space

    The debate over the shape of space has taken some new twists with the analysis of satellite snapshots of the universe's temperature waves.

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  19. Planetary Science

    Martian Invasion

    If all goes according to plan, three spacecraft—one in December, two in January—will land on the Red Planet, looking for evidence that liquid water once flowed on its surface.

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