Feature
- Earth
Proof of Burden
Two teams of scientists report that the blood and urine of most Americans contain toxic cocktails of metals, artificial hormones, and chemical ingredients of plastics, flame retardants, pesticides, herbicides, and disinfectants.
- Tech
NanoLights! Camera! Action!
Fluorescent particles of semiconductors are giving biologists a new view of cells and proteins.
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How the Butterfly Gets Its Spots
The spots on a butterfly wing turn out to be unusually good model systems for a range of disciplines from genetics to behavioral ecology, offering biologists a chance to paint the really big picture of how evolution works.
- Health & Medicine
Dietary Dilemmas
Low-carbohydrate diets, such as the Atkins diet, could be more effective for weight loss than low-fat diets are.
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Essence of g
New efforts to probe the biology of intelligence stir up a long-running controversy over what mental tests actually measure.
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Genghis Khan’s Legacy?
Genghis Kahn's military success 800 years ago may have spread a particular form of the Y chromosome, one he may have himself carried.
- Earth
Electronic Jetsam
Oceanographers are developing and deploying a variety of seafaring probes—including drifters, gliders, and scientific torpedoes—that will enable them to explore and monitor the ocean remotely.
- Earth
Why the Mercury Falls
Certain pollutants can foster the localized fallout of mercury, a toxic heavy metal, from the atmosphere.
- Health & Medicine
Getting the Bugs Out of Blood
Researchers are developing methods for inactivating all sorts of pathogens that could be found in blood, including West Nile virus, an emerging infection recently brought to the United States from Africa.
- Astronomy
Planet Formation on the Fast Track
New computer simulations suggest that planets as massive as Jupiter may have formed in only a few hundred years rather than several million years, as the leading theory of planet formation requires.
- Chemistry
Delivering the Goods
Experimental gene-delivery therapies generally use viruses to shuttle genetic material into cells, but some researchers are devising ways to avoid using the sometimes-risky viruses.
- Anthropology
Southern Reindeer Folk
Western scientists make their first expeditions to Mongolia's Tsaatan people, herders who preserve the old ways at the southernmost rim of reindeer territory.
