News
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- Health & Medicine
How being deaf can enhance sight
Hearing-specialized brain regions can adapt to processing visual input, cat experiments show.
- Science & Society
2010 Nobels recognize potential of basic science to shape the world
Prizes go to IVF, graphene and ‘carbon chemistry at its best’
By Nathan Seppa - Life
One small step for a snail, one giant leap for snailkind
Experiments suggest that gastropods shed their shells in one fell swoop during the evolutionary transition that created slugs.
- Space
Life may have started sky high
Simulations of the atmosphere on Saturn’s moon Titan suggest that basic chemical ingredients could have formed far above early Earth.
By Ron Cowen -
- Earth
Oceanographers with flippers
Tracking seal dives off Antarctica reveals seafloor troughs that affect ocean circulation.
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Siblings of autistic children may share some symptoms
Studies may need to account for a predisposition to autistic traits in undiagnosed members of families where the disorder occurs.
By Bruce Bower -
- Space
It’s only a seltzer moon
Plumes spewing from the south pole of Saturn’s Enceladus may have carbonated source, a new analysis suggests.
By Ron Cowen - Animals
A little climate change goes a long way in the tropics
In hot places, even minor warming could rev up metabolism in animals that don’t generate their own heat, a new analysis suggests.
By Susan Milius - Chemistry
Basic tool for making organic molecules wins chemistry Nobel
Three researchers get prize for developing methods that use the metal palladium to catalyze the synthesis of complex carbon carbon-containing molecules for drugs, electronics and other applications.