Feature
- Animals
Music without Borders
When birds trill and whales woo-oo, we call it singing. Are we serious?
- Health & Medicine
The New GI Tracts
For preventing heart disease, diets that control insulin are all the buzz.
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Pushing the Mood Swings
Social and psychological forces sway the course of manic depression.
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- Materials Science
The Buck Starts Here
The U.S. Mint performed some neat tricks to make a golden dollar.
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Get Rid of the Bodies
Scientists are learning how organisms safely clear out cell corpses.
- Materials Science
Materials with Memory
Metal alloys and polymers that can remember a preprogrammed shape may literally reshape technologies ranging from warfare to medicine and car repair.
- Tech
Looking for Mr. Goodoxide
The impending collapse of a 40-year union between the electronic wonder materials silicon and silicon dioxide threatens the advance of chip technology and propels a high-stakes search for silicon dioxide replacements.
- Earth
Greenhouse Gassed
Scientists are discovering that more carbon dioxide in the air could spell disaster for plants and the animals that love to eat them.
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Evolutionary Upstarts
Theories of the evolution of the human mind are evolving, with some researchers now presenting alternatives to the dominant notion that genetic competition for survival during the Stone Age yielded brains stocked with a bevy of instincts for specific types of thinking.
- Plants
The Wood Detective
Alex Wiedenhoeft belongs to the elite profession of wood identifier, the person to call when a crime investigator, museum curator, archaeologist, or patent attorney with an unusual client really needs to know what that splinter really is.
- Chemistry
Molecules Leave Their Mark
A material etched with tiny, carefully shaped pores can act like an artificial enzyme, cell membrane, or receptor.
