Feature

  1. Earth

    New PCBs?

    New studies have begun linking toxic risks with a ubiquitous family of flame retardants.

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  2. Chemistry

    The Nature of Things

    An earth scientist's proposed alternative periodic table of elements is emblematic of the growing desire among scientists to recast this 130-year-old chart.

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  3. Math

    Best Guess

    Economists are exploring the use of betting markets as tools for predicting the consequences of policy decisions by a government, corporation, or other institution.

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  4. Anthropology

    Erectus Ahoy

    A researcher who explores the nautical abilities of Stone Age people by building rafts and having crews row them across stretches of ocean contends that language and other cognitive advances emerged 900,000 years ago with Homo erectus, not considerably later among modern humans, as is usually assumed.

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  5. Earth

    When Genes Escape

    The focus of the debate over transgenic crops has changed from whether genes will escape to what difference it will make when they do.

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  6. Visionary Research

    Scientists are debating why primates evolved full color vision and whether that development led to a reduced sense of smell.

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  7. Physics

    Hot Crystal

    In seeming violation of one of the laws of physics, a new type of metal microstructure promises to lead to far more efficient incandescent light bulbs and also to boost the development of light-based microcircuits and heat-to-electricity generators.

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  8. Earth

    On Thinning Ice

    Although some of Earth's glaciers seem to be holding their own in the face of global warming, most of them are on the decline, many of them significantly.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Checkmate for a Child-Killer?

    If a new generation of vaccines pans out, the days of rotavirus, which kills at least 450,000 infants and children every year by causing severe diarrhea, may be numbered.

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  10. Animals

    Leashing the Rattlesnake

    Even in the 21st century, there's still room for old-fashioned, do-it-yourself ingenuity in experimental design for studying animal behavior.

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  11. Planetary Science

    After the Tragedy

    NASA's plan to return the space shuttles safely to flight after the Columbia accident is coming under intense scrutiny.

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  12. The Body Electric

    An electric field inside an embryo may tell it whether to place an internal organ on its left or right side.

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