Vol. 162 No. #19
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More Stories from the November 9, 2002 issue

  1. Earth

    Wildfire Below: Smoldering peat disgorges huge volumes of carbon

    Set alight by wildfires, thick beds of decaying tropical plant matter can pump massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, rivaling those produced globally each year from the combustion of fossil fuels.

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  2. Tech

    Nanotech Switch: Strategy controls minuscule motor

    Researchers have modified a rotating protein fragment so that it starts and stops spinning with the addition and removal of zinc.

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  3. Astronomy

    Neutron Star Stuff: Just neutrons, no quarks

    A new study suggests that although neutron stars may be weird, they’re not strange.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    Coconspirator? Genital herpes linked to cervical cancer

    Having a genital herpes infection doubles the risk of cervical cancer among women who have human papillomavirus.

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  5. Animals

    Lizard’s Choice: Mating test pits physique versus domain

    When she decides to move in, is it him or is it his real estate?

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  6. Eye-Grabbing Insights: Visual structure grips infants’ attention

    Babies take their first major strides with their eyes, not their legs, as they rapidly distinguish among playpens, pacifiers, and a plethora of other objects.

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  7. Health & Medicine

    First Line of Defense: Hints of primitive antibodies

    After looking in primitive marine invertebrates that are considered to be close relatives to vertebrates, immunologists find families of genes that might provide clues as to how early immune systems evolved.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Schizophrenia spurs imaging network

    Thanks to a federal grant, a team of researchers will establish a national database of brain images that will allow for expanded investigations of the neural basis of schizophrenia.

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  9. Astronomy

    Cosmic rays from the solar system

    Dust grains from the Kuiper belt, a storehouse of comets and other frozen bodies in the outer solar system, are the source of some of the lower energy cosmic rays that bombard Earth.

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  10. Astronomy

    Milky Way black hole gets real

    Tracing the path of a star orbiting near the center of our galaxy, astronomers have found the best evidence to date that a supermassive black hole lies at the Milky Way’s core.

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  11. Memory grows up in 1-year-olds

    As children enter the second year of life, they exhibit a marked improvement in recalling simple events after a 4-month delay, perhaps reflecting the growth of memory-related brain areas.

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  12. Materials Science

    Worm’s teeth conceal odd mineral material

    A worm's teeth contain a copper mineral that could serve as a model for new materials.

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  13. Earth

    Is a faster commute worth it?

    Living near busy roads is bad for your heart and lungs.

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  14. Earth

    Weed killer feminizes fish

    The weed killer atrazine can turn normally hermaphroditic fish into females, a new study shows.

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  15. Earth

    Pesticides block male hormones

    Some common pesticides can block the ability of androgens, male sex hormones, to trigger normal gene activities.

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  16. Health & Medicine

    Old Drug, New Uses?

    A hormone called erythropoietin, long used to treat anemia, also seems to protect against nerve damage and holds promise as a new therapy for stroke and spinal cord injury.

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  17. Astronomy

    Jet Astronomy

    For the first time, scientists have traced the slowing and dimming of X-ray-emitting jets from a black hole.

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