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We summarize the week's science breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Tech

    Seeing red: Next installment in BPA-paper saga

    Consumers now have a way to identify cash register tape that is free of endocrine-disrupting chemical.

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  2. Tech

    Election projections for science investments

    The November 2, mid-term election results are in (mostly) and pundits are billing it as a historic turnabout. With a divided Congress, passing legislation — never an easy task — risks becoming harder still. And with fiscal austerity having been a leading campaign issue for the newbies, R&D is unlikely to see a major boost in federal funding during the next two years.

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  3. Tech

    Coming soon: Holographic Skype

    The creators of the fastest telepresence system to date predict real-time 3-D TV in a decade.

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  4. Tech

    Plenty of foods harbor BPA, study finds

    Some communities have banned the sale of plastic baby bottles and sippy cups that are manufactured using bisphenol A, a hormone-mimicking chemical. In a few grocery stores, cashiers have already begun donning gloves to avoid handling thermal receipt paper whose BPA-based surface coating may rub off on the fingers. But how’s a family to avoid exposure to this contaminant when it taints the food supply?

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  5. Tech

    Trading places

    As the pace of financial transactions accelerates, researchers look forward to a time when the only limiting factor is the speed of light.

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  6. Tech

    Mind over machine

    People control a computer through electrodes implanted in their brains.

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  7. Tech

    Robots can use coffee as a picker-upper

    A gripper made of a bag of loose grains has advantages over grasping devices that use individual digits.

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  8. Animals

    Doing the wet-dog wiggle

    Hairy animals have evolved to shed water quickly by shaking at the optimal speed for their size.

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  9. Earth

    Contemplating an Arctic oil spill

    The waters off northern Alaska may be “the largest oil province in the United States” after the Gulf, notes Edward Itta, a native of Barrow, Alaska. He is also mayor of the North Slope Borough, an 88,000-square-mile jurisdiction that runs across the upper part of the state. And in a September 27 videoconference with the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, he tried to impress upon the commissioners just how remote his neck of the tundra is.

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  10. Tech

    Poor initial Gulf spill numbers did ‘not impact’ response

    In the early weeks after the catastrophic blowout of the deep-water well in the Gulf of Mexico this spring, BP — the well’s owner — provided the government dramatically low estimates of the flow rate of oil and gas into the sea. Did telling Uncle Sam and the public that the flow rate was 1,000 barrels per day and later 5,000 barrels per day — when the actual rate was closer to 50,000 to 65,000 barrels per day — affect the spill’s management?

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  11. Tech

    Tiny tools aren’t toys

    Enzyme-based machinery could have medical applications.

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  12. Math

    Potato chips: A symptom of the U.S. R&D problem

    Last year, U.S. consumers spent $7.1 billion on potato chips — $2 billion more than the federal government’s total 2009 investment on research and development. There’s something wrong, here, when Americans are more willing to empty their wallets for the junk food that will swell their waistlines than for investments in the engine driving the creation of jobs, economic growth and national security.

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