Feature

  1. Math

    Great Computations

    From sifting through radio telescope signals for signs of extraterrestrial life to searching for record-breaking prime numbers, home and office computers contribute via the Internet to a variety of research efforts.

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  2. Tech

    Pocket Sockets

    Keenly aware of user frustration with the short-lived batteries in cell phones and other portable electronics, researchers are rushing to work out the bugs in tiny fuel-cell power plants that will be as small as batteries—but last a lot longer and be refuelable.

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  3. Health & Medicine

    Missed ZZZ’s, More Disease?

    New evidence suggests that chronic lack of sleep may be as important as poor nutrition and physical inactivity in the development of chronic illnesses such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

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  4. Astronomy

    Lonely Universe

    In a universe dominated by a mysterious antigravity force, dubbed dark energy, distant galaxies will eventually recede from each other faster than the speed of light and observers in our Milky Way some 50 billion years from now will see only a handful of other galaxies in the sky.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Inflammatory Ideas

    Researchers are gathering evidence that inflammation precedes and predicts diabetes.

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  6. Genes to Grow On

    Researchers studying children with Williams syndrome say that the unusual condition emerges through a developmental process that's influenced but not predetermined by a genetic defect.

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  7. Earth

    Climate’s Long-Lost Twin

    New geological evidence suggests that humans have started exploiting fossil fuels and altering Earth's atmosphere at precisely the moment when greenhouse gases could do the most damage to climate.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Hear, Hear

    A 14-year study of twin babies shows definitively for the first time that there's a link between middle ear infections and heredity.

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  9. Paleontology

    Sea Dragons

    About 235 million years ago, as the earliest dinosaurs stomped about on land, some of their reptilian relatives slipped back into the surf, took on an aquatic lifestyle, and became ichthyosaurs—Greek for fish lizards.

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  10. Health & Medicine

    Cooking Up a Carcinogen

    The discovery that acrylamide—a known animal carcinogen—forms in many foods as they fry or bake has prompted the development of an international research network to investigate whether it poses a threat.

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  11. Tech

    Eau, Brother!

    The combination of advanced sensor materials and powerful computer chips promises devices that can sense threats ranging from bacteria in food to explosives in land mines.

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  12. Physics

    Hunting for Higher Dimensions

    Inspired by recent theoretical insights, physicists at accelerators and gravitational laboratories are searching for clues to dimensions beyond the four dimensions of space-time.

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