Vol. 172 No. #11
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More Stories from the September 15, 2007 issue

  1. Health & Medicine

    How platelets help cancer spread

    A tumor cell protein influences blood platelets in a way that helps a cancer spread through the body.

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  2. Astronomy

    Major merger

    Four galaxies are ramming into each other in one of the biggest cosmic collisions ever recorded.

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  3. Perfect pitch isn’t so perfect in many

    Among people with perfect pitch, the most common error seems to be misidentifying G flat as A, the note on which orchestras traditionally tune.

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  4. Anthropology

    Advantage: Starch

    An enhanced ability to digest starch may have given early humans an evolutionary advantage over their ape relatives.

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  5. Archaeology

    Ancient city grew from outside in

    A 6,000-year-old city in what's now northeastern Syria developed when initially independent settlements expanded and merged, unlike other nearby cities that grew from a core outward.

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  6. Chemistry

    Nanoparticles multitask

    Magnetite nanoparticles have catalytic properties that may be useful in wastewater treatment and biomedical assays.

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  7. Astronomy

    Bloated planet

    A newly discovered exoplanet is the largest and lowest-density such object yet found.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Blood vessel growth factor also does housekeeping

    A growth factor that promotes blood vessel development also maintains normal blood vessel health, perhaps explaining the vascular side effects of some cancer drugs.

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  9. Physics

    Alliance of Opposites: Electrons and positrons make new molecule

    Positronium, consisting of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, has been made into a molecular form.

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  10. Planetary Science

    Survivor: Extrasolar planet escapes stellar attack

    An extrasolar planet survived after its aging parent star ballooned into a red giant that almost engulfed it.

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  11. Animals

    Fish Switch: Salmon make baby trout after species, sex swap

    Salmon implanted with trout reproductive tissue bred to produce a generation of normal rainbow trout.

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  12. Health & Medicine

    Debate Renewed: Diabetes drug ups heart risk

    A popular diabetes drug significantly increases the risk of heart failure and heart attack in those who take it.

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  13. Earth

    Grazing on the Periodic Table: Some ancient microorganisms lived on a diet of pure sulfur

    Microorganisms that lived 3.5 billion years ago obtained energy by metabolizing pure sulfur.

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  14. Health & Medicine

    Brain Sabotage: Alzheimer’s protein may spawn miniseizures

    Amyloid-beta, a protein implicated in Alzheimer's disease, causes misfiring of neurons and minor brain seizures in mice.

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  15. Tech

    Spot On: Printing flexible electronics one nanodot at a time

    A new high-resolution printing technique could make flexible electronics such as plastic displays and solar cells easier to produce.

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  16. Consciousness in the Raw

    Observations of children born without most of the brain's outer layer, or cortex, and evidence from animal studies suggest that a basic form of consciousness may arise from the brain stem alone.

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  17. Health & Medicine

    Curry Power

    A component of the spice turmeric, the color-giving ingredient in yellow curries, may help prevent and possibly treat Alzheimer's disease.

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  18. Humans

    Letters from the September 15, 2007, issue of Science News

    Talk talk talk “Hidden Smarts: Abstract thought trumps IQ scores in autism” (SN: 7/7/07, p. 4) didn’t mention that traditional IQ tests are in one sense “language” tests. The Ravens test doesn’t involve language processing in a typical manner. A person with a language disorder, as an autistic person is assumed to be, would do […]

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