Vol. 172 No. #9
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More Stories from the September 1, 2007 issue

  1. Health & Medicine

    When antioxidants go bad

    Overproduction of antioxidants, usually thought to be beneficial, is the cause of an inherited heart disease.

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  2. Believers gain no health advantage

    Strong religious beliefs or practices don't appear to benefit depressed or socially isolated heart attack survivors.

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  3. Animals

    Bats hum for sugar too

    Some nectar-feeding bats metabolize sugars as rapidly as hummingbirds do.

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  4. Earth

    Arctic snow was dirtier in early 1900s

    Arctic snow collects less soot now than it did a century ago, but it's still dirtier than it was before the Industrial Revolution.

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  5. Tech

    Corny collagen

    Corn engineered to produce collagen may someday replace slaughterhouse leftovers as a source of gelatin.

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  6. Light switch

    A photosensitive molecule makes switching off a gene as simple as flicking on a light.

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  7. Earth

    Tiny tubes, big pollution

    Making carbon nanotubes also produces a lot of airborne carcinogens.

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  8. Humans

    Urine tests for cities

    Analysis of sewage gauges community-wide use of illegal drugs.

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  9. Share Alike: Genes from bacteria found in animals

    Bacteria swap genes all the time, but it now appears that they can give their DNA to some animals as well.

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  10. Barely Alive: Ancient bacteria survive in the slow lane

    Microbes locked in 500,000-year-old permafrost appear to breathe and show other signs of very slow life.

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  11. Plants

    Cretaceous Corsages? Fossil in amber suggests antiquity of orchids

    Orchids appeared on the scene about 80 million years ago, according to evidence from a bee that collected orchid pollen and got trapped in amber.

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  12. Earth

    Oxygen Rocks: Volcanoes spurred early atmospheric change

    Earth owes its oxygen-rich atmosphere to a change in volcanic activity about 2.5 billion years ago.

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  13. No-Fight Zones: School programs reduce violence in all grades

    A variety of school-based programs succeed in reducing students' violent and disruptive behavior.

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  14. Astronomy

    Dawn of a Disk: Water vapor pours down on embryonic star

    Infrared observations show water vapor pouring down on a planet-forming disk around a young star.

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  15. Health & Medicine

    Bad Bug: Microbe raises stomach cancer risk

    A gene in some strains of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori may greatly increase the risk of stomach cancer.

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  16. Rethinking Bad Taste

    Many animals use mimicry to gain a competitive advantage, but are there degrees of cheating?

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  17. Humans

    The Wealth of Nations

    Analysis of the connections among different types of economic activities explains why some countries succeed, and others fail, in diversifying their economies.

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  18. Humans

    Letters from the September 1, 2007, issue of Science News

    Risk reversal? “Diabetes drug might hike heart risk” (SN: 6/23/07, p. 397) reports 86 heart attacks among 15,560 rosiglitazone (Avandia) users, versus 72 others in a control group of 12,283. A study coauthor then says that “after statistical adjustment, that yields a 43 percent higher risk of heart attacks among rosiglitazone users.” Simple arithmetic would […]

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