Vol. 178 No. #9
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More Stories from the October 23, 2010 issue

  1. Tech

    To tame traffic, go with the flow

    Lights should respond to cars, a study concludes, not the other way around.

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  2. Tech

    A compass that lights the way

    Researchers develop a highly sensitive optical instrument for measuring magnetic fields.

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  3. Planetary Science

    Life’s cold start

    Primordial molecules could have replicated themselves in a slushy place, new experiments suggest.

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  4. Humans

    Clues to child sacrifices found in Inca building

    Children killed in elaborate rituals were drawn from all over the South American empire, new research suggests.

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  5. Life

    X-rays in 3-D show nanosized details

    A new X-ray microscope technique peers inside materials to reveal their inner nature.

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  6. Tech

    Everything really is relative

    Two tabletop experiments demonstrate the time-warping principle at the human scale.

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  7. Life

    Lone Star cats rescue cousins in Sunshine State

    Florida panther numbers have tripled since the introduction of females from Texas injected vital genetic diversity, a new report says.

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  8. Humans

    Neandertals blasted out of existence, archaeologists propose

    An eruption may have wiped out Neandertals in Europe and western Asia, clearing the region for Stone Age Homo sapiens.

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  9. Tech

    Tiny tools aren’t toys

    Enzyme-based machinery could have medical applications.

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  10. Life

    A salty tail

    Just adding sodium can stimulate limb regrowth in tadpoles, a study finds, raising the possibility that human tissue might respond to relatively simple treatment.

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  11. Physics

    Glacier found to be deeply cracked

    A new study finds deep fissures in Alaska ice that could affect future responses to melting.

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  12. Life

    A thousand points of height

    A study finds heaps of genetic variants that influence a person’s stature, but even added together they don’t stack up to much.

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  13. Space

    Distant world could support life

    For the first time, astronomers detect a planet beyond the solar system with the potential to be habitable.

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  14. Life

    Massive count a drop in the bucket

    As the decade-long Census of Marine Life totes up thousands of new species, it leaves much yet to discover in the world’s oceans.

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  15. Science & Society

    2010 Nobels recognize potential of basic science to shape the world

    Prizes go to IVF, graphene and ‘carbon chemistry at its best’

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  16. Science Future for October 23, 2010

    October 28 – 30 National Science Teachers Association holds its Kansas City area conference on science education. Go to www.nsta.org/conferences/2010kan November 1 Slated launch date for shuttle Discovery’s final spaceflight. See www.nasa.gov/missions November 5Nomination deadline for the 15th Annual Carnegie Science Awards. Go to www.carnegiesciencecenter.org

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  17. Vitamin D is essential to the modern indoor lifestyle

    It’s known that vitamin D is necessary for proper bone formation and maintenance. But recent decades have seen a torrent of studies suggesting that vitamin D can also affect many other aspects of health; some scientists have come to consider the daily recommended intake of 400 international units of vitamin D far too low. Michael […]

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  18. Life

    The unusual suspects

    With no obvious culprit in sight, geneticists do broader sweeps to identify autism’s causes.

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  19. Life

    An oceanic endeavor

    Marine census catalogs creatures that roam all corners of the seas.

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  20. Cosmic dioramas

    Metamaterials may offer windows into other worlds.

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  21. Letters

    Music on the mind Common experience confirms that music serves language (“A mind for music,” SN: 8/14/10, p. 17). A person unfamiliar with, say, the musical South Pacific has only to listen to its songs a few times to sing the lyrics from memory. Another who tries to memorize the lyrics by just hearing them […]

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  22. Science Past from the issue of October 22, 1960

    WORLD TV VIA SATELLITES SET AT $170,000,000 — Fifty improved courier-type communications satellites would provide world-wide telephone and television facilities for a mere $170,000,000: $100,000,000 for the satellites and $70,000,000 for the ground stations. These are the figures the American Telephone and Telegraph Company estimated for the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C. Without the […]

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  23. The Weather of the Future by Heidi Cullen

    Review by Sid Perkins.

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