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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Animals

    Head cam shows how falcons track prey

    Falcons use motion camouflage to capture flying prey, a new study shows.

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  2. Tech

    Jellyfish-like flying machine takes off

    Mimicking sea creatures instead of insects leads to better hovering, scientists find.

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  3. Computing

    Materials’ light tricks may soon extend to doing math

    A simulation paves the way toward metamaterials that can perform ultrafast complex mathematical operations using light waves.

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  4. Tech

    Reader favorites of 2013

    For this issue, the editors selected the 25 most important and intriguing science stories of the year. But online readers seemed to point to a different bunch, showing just how subjective such an exercise can be.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Forecasting system predicts peaks in flu outbreaks

    A real-time forecasting system has accurately predicted the peak flu cases up to nine weeks before the outbreak.

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  6. Computing

    Fastest supercomputers

    The new list of the world’s fastest computers, now in its 20th year, has China’s Tianhe-2 on top with a processing speed of 33.9 petaflops — or quadrillions of calculations per second.

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  7. Tech

    Ingenious

    A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America by Jason Fagone.

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  8. Physics

    Single atoms hold on to information

    Minutes-long data storage by individual atoms beats previous record of tiny fraction of a second.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    The future of the robotic leg

    While robotic legs have come incredibly far, the next step, integrating the function into the rest of the body, still has a way to go.

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  10. Neuroscience

    Mind to motion

    Brain-computer interfaces promise new freedom for the paralyzed and immobile.

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  11. Humans

    Our Final Invention

    Computers already make all sorts of decisions for you. Imagine if the machines controlled even more aspects of life and could truly think for themselves.

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  12. Life

    3-D printing builds bacterial metropolises

    By simulating biofilms, new 3-D printing technique may help researchers study antibiotic resistance.

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