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  1. Excuse me, dear, which octopus are you?

    Male blue-ringed octopuses get pretty far along in their courtship before they determine whether their partner is a female.

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  2. How butterflies can eat cyanide

    Some newly recognized chemical wizardry lets some Heliconius caterpillars thrive on leaves that defend themselves with cyanide.

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  3. Astronomy

    Astronomers get radio protection

    Astronomers studying the universe at millimeter-wave energies-the high-frequency portion of the radio spectrum-were given an official guarantee last month that commercial satellites and other communication devices won't interfere with the scientists' observations.

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  4. Astronomy

    The smashup that rejuvenates

    For some elderly stars, the fountain of youth may be only a collision away.

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  5. Math

    Contra Dances, Matrices, and Groups

    Though unknown to many people, contra dancing is practiced with great devotion and abandon throughout the United States by fans of this lively dance form. What’s striking is that a remarkably high percentage of contra dancing’s practitioners are highly educated, often involved in mathematics, computers, or engineering. Matrix representing initial configuration of two couples in […]

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  6. Tech

    Watching the Big Wheelers: In sea of cars, trucks reveal traffic flow

    A new way to sense traffic jams more quickly tracks the motion of trucks within the overall traffic flow.

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  7. Materials Science

    Making Polymers That Self-Destruct: Layers break apart in controlled way

    A new polymer film chews itself apart under certain conditions, making it a potential candidate for the controlled delivery of therapeutic drugs.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Blood sugar processing tied to brain problems

    Elderly people with slightly elevated blood sugar are more likely to have short-term memory problems than those with normal blood sugar.

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  9. 19304

    I was dismayed to see you publish an unsubstantiated and highly misleading claim that welfare “reform” is not harming children. The study dealt with the atypical welfare mothers able to find sustainable employment. For them, I don’t doubt that having enough money rather than too little would be an improvement. Unmentioned are the many unskilled […]

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  10. Working Out: Welfare reform hasn’t changed kids so far

    A study conducted among low-income families in three states suggests that the emotional health and academic skills of preschoolers and young adolescents don't suffer when their mothers move off welfare and into the workforce.

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  11. Earth

    Slippin’ Slide: Glaciers surge after ice shelf collapses

    Five of the six large glaciers that once fed into Antarctica's Larsen A ice shelf have sped up significantly since that floating ice mass collapsed and drifted away in January 1995.

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  12. Health & Medicine

    Ulcer Clue? Molecule could be key to stomach ailment

    A protein called Ptprz binds with a bacterial toxin to produce ulcers in mice, possibly revealing a mechanism for the disorder.

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