News
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Health & Medicine
Surgery removes grenade from soldier’s head
Colombian military doctors extracted an intact grenade from the head of a teenage soldier.
By Ben Harder -
Humans
The Chosen: A New Crop of Scientific Minds; Student science competition announces finalists
Forty high school students from 14 states and the District of Columbia have been selected to compete for the top prizes in the 2004 Intel Science Talent Search.
By Ben Harder -
Animals
Vanishing Vultures: Bird deaths linked to vet-drug residues
The recent puzzling crash in vulture populations in Pakistan comes not from some new disease but from exposure to veterinary drug residues in livestock carcasses.
By Susan Milius -
Materials Science
Pumping Carbon: Researchers watch nanofibers grow
The first atomic-scale movies of carbon nanofiber growth show particles of a metal catalyst pulsating wildly while carbon and metal atoms scuttle across the particle’s surface.
By Peter Weiss -
Health & Medicine
Wine Surprise: Heart-protective effect is independent of antioxidants
Two studies in mice suggest that, if wine protects against heart disease, it's probably not because of the antioxidants that the drink contains.
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Health & Medicine
Good to the Bone: Strontium compound prevents some fractures
An experimental drug containing strontium makes bones denser and decreases the risk of fractures, a study of elderly women finds.
By Nathan Seppa -
Planetary Science
Red Planet Roundup: Opportunity knocks; Spirit revives
The NASA rover Opportunity bounced onto an equatorial Martian plain early on Jan. 25 and found an intriguing outcropping of rocks on the other side of the planet from where its ailing but recovering twin, Spirit, had recently stalled.
By Ron Cowen -
Materials Science
Flexible E-Paper: Plastic circuits drive paperlike displays
In a major step toward electronic paper, researchers have made electronic-ink displays on flexible plastic sheets.
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Physics
Skipping stones 101
Using their own stone-skipping machine, physicists have found what may be the best angle for a rock to hit the water in order to achieve the most skips.
By Peter Weiss -
Juggling takes stage as brain modifier
Marked volume increases occur in visual areas of the brain as people learn to juggle and then are partly reversed when the budding jugglers stop practicing their newfound skill, a brain-scan investigation finds.
By Bruce Bower -
Physics
New signs of shadow particles
The influence of as-yet-undiscovered heavy particles outside of today's prevailing theory of particle physics may have accelerated the rate at which subatomic muons wobbled in a recent experiment.
By Peter Weiss