Feature
- Space
Atom & Cosmos: Science news of the year, 2008
Science News writers and editors looked back at the past year's stories and selected a handful as the year's most interesting and important in Atom & Cosmos. Follow hotlinks to the full, original stories.
- Earth
The Hunt for Habitable Planets
Here and now, a new suite of small telescopes are poised to look for Earthlike planets beyond the solar system.
- Physics
Physicists Hot for Ultracold
Physicists have recently coaxed molecules into ultracold states in which motion is nearly gone.
- Health & Medicine
Imagination Medicine
Brain imaging reveals the substance of placebos. Expectation alone triggers the same neural circuits and chemicals as real drugs.
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Sequencing the dead to save the living
Reviving ancient genomes of long-extinct creatures offers a window into past extinctions—and may help prevent future die outs.
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No gene is an island
Even as biologists catalog the discrete parts of life forms, an emerging picture reveals that life’s functions arise from interconnectedness.
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The decider
Informing the debate over the reality of ‘free will’ requires learning something about the lateral habenula.
- Health & Medicine
Itch
When it comes to sensory information detected by the body, pain is king, and itch is the court jester. But that insistent, tingly feeling—satisfied only by a scratch—is anything but funny to the millions of people who suffer from it chronically.
- Space
Half-life (more or less)
Physicists are stirred by claims that the sun may change what’s unchangeable—the rate of radioactive decay.
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- Chemistry
Nicotine’s new appeal
Mimicking the addictive compound’s action in the brain could lead to new drugs for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and schizophrenia.
