Vol. 186 No. 7
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More Stories from the October 4, 2014 issue

  1. Health & Medicine

    Elderly benefit from high-dose flu shot

    High-dose vaccine may offer people age 65 and older improved protection against the flu.

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  2. Materials Science

    Nature-inspired camouflage changes its looks with light

    Thin, flexible new material steals the color-shifting capabilities of cephalopod skin.

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  3. Life

    Gut bacteria may prevent food allergies

    In mice, gut bacteria blocked food from seeping out of the intestines and triggering an immune reaction in the bloodstream.

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  4. Neuroscience

    Laser light rewrites memories in mice

    Mouse experiment demonstrates that good memories can be transformed into bad ones, and vice versa.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    To grow new knee cartilage, look to the nose

    Cartilage-making cells from the nose grew into patches that successfully replaced damaged or missing cartilage in the knees of goats and of humans.

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  6. Anthropology

    Siberians came to North American Arctic in two waves

    Siberian ancestors of the modern-day Inuit replaced a 4,000-year-old North American Arctic culture, a DNA study reveals.

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  7. Neuroscience

    Pulses to the brain bring memory gains

    The ability to associate faces with words is boosted when an outer part of the brain is stimulated, a study shows.

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  8. Animals

    Bats hunt ballooning túngara frogs by echolocation

    Bat echolocation tracks the billowing vocal sacs of male túngara frogs.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Rabies races up nerve cells

    By hijacking a transporter protein and hitting the gas, the disease-causing rabies virus races up long nerve cells that stretch through the body, a new study finds.

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  10. Animals

    A fish reared out of water walks better

    The normally aquatic fish Senegal bichir raised on land suggests how ancient species might have transitioned into terrestrial ones.

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  11. Astronomy

    Milky Way connected to a vast network of galaxies

    The Milky Way galaxy lives on the outer edge of a newly discovered supercluster of galaxies named Laniakea that is 520 million light-years across.

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  12. Animals

    Archerfish mouth is the secret of precision spit

    Trained fish shoot down two hypotheses for their fine spit control but reveal fancy mouth work.

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  13. Oceans

    Plastic may take unexpected routes to marine garbage patches

    By redefining ocean boundaries, researchers offer new insight to how litter moves through the oceans and who’s to blame for the floating clumps of trash.

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  14. Microbes

    Magnets diagnose malaria in minutes

    A small magnet-based device provides faster, more-sensitive malaria diagnosis in mice.

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  15. Astronomy

    Plasma corkscrews form on sun during stellar eruption

    Coronal mass ejection creates twisted loop in sun’s magnetic field.

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  16. Planetary Science

    Plate tectonics spotted on Europa

    First evidence for plate tectonics elsewhere in solar system discovered on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.

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  17. Health & Medicine

    Autism treatment for babies shows promise in small study

    A small study finds that changing how parents interact with infants may reduce autism symptoms.

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  18. Archaeology

    Pyramid builders could have used rolling blocks

    Instead of sliding blocks on a ramp, ancient Egyptians could have rolled the massive bricks to the pyramids, a physicist suggests.

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  19. Animals

    Sneaky little giraffe weevils beat big rivals

    A little stealth gives smaller giraffe weevil males a leg up when competing with big ones for mates.

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  20. Tech

    Long after JFK assassination, gunshot forensics still limited

    The Warren Commission Report included the results of a neutron activation analysis test of Lee Harvey Oswald. But even that high-tech analysis can't distinguish the type of weapon fired.

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  21. Ecosystems

    ‘Where Do Camels Belong?’ explores invasive species

    Ecologist Ken Thompson takes a closer look at the impacts (or lack thereof) of invasive species.

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