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  1. Sleeper Effects: Slumber may fortify memory, stir insight

    In two separate studies, researchers found that a specific sleep stage may amplify recent memories and that sleep can inspire problem-solving insights.

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  2. Pushing Cancer over the Edge: Compounds trigger tumor-cell suicide

    Compounds that free cancer cells to commit suicide slow tumor growth.

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  3. Plants

    Dawn of the Y: Papaya—Glimpse of early sex chromosome

    Genetic mappers say that the papaya plant has a rudimentary Y chromosome, the youngest one in evolutionary terms yet found, offering a glimpse of the evolution of sex chromosomes.

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  4. Planetary Science

    Spirit Gets Its Wheels Dirty: Mars rover begins scientific work

    Spirit, the rover that landed on Mars on Jan. 3, last week began studying the rocks and soil at its landing site.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Cluster Buster: Might a simple sugar derail Huntington’s?

    A study in mice with a disease resembling Huntington's shows that a simple sugar impedes the protein aggregation that kills brain cells.

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  6. Physics

    Wet ‘n’ Wild

    Scientists have tracked the weirdness of water to microscopic arrangements of molecules and perhaps to the existence of a second, low-temperature form of the familiar substance.

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  7. 19372

    John Harris is quoted as saying that the absence of opossums is a “curious exception” to the list of current mammals of the Los Angeles Basin preserved in the La Brea tar pits. But the presence of opossums on the West Coast is well documented to be very recent. All current California opossums derive entirely […]

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  8. Paleontology

    L.A.’s Oldest Tourist Trap

    Modern excavations at the La Brea tar pits are revealing a wealth of information about local food chains during recent ice ages, as well as details about what happened to trapped animals in their final hours.

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  9. Reef Relations

    The discovery of humanlike genes in coral means that the common ancestor of both humans and coral was more complex than previously assumed.

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  10. Health & Medicine

    Viruses depend on shocking proteins

    To replicate within a cell, a bird virus must force the cell to make certain proteins.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    Drugs slow aging in worms

    Drugs that defuse so-called free radicals lengthen a worm's life span by more than 50 percent.

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  12. Whatever that is, it’s scary

    Tammar wallabies that have lived away from mammalian predators for more than 9,000 years still seem to recognize the appearance of danger.

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