Vol. 200 No. 1
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More Stories from the July 3, 2021 issue

  1. Chemistry

    A sweet father-son bond inspires tasty new molecule models

    New edible models of proteins could spark students’ interest in the world of chemistry, especially students who are blind.

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  2. Physics

    Auroras form when electrons from space ride waves in Earth’s magnetic field

    New lab results confirm that auroras are triggered by disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field called Alfvén waves.

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  3. Life

    Even hard-to-kill tardigrades can’t always survive being shot out of a gun

    A recent experiment put tardigrades’ indestructibility to the test by firing the critters at speeds up to 1,000 meters per second.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    FDA approved a new Alzheimer’s drug despite controversy over whether it works

    A new Alzheimer's treatment slows progression of the disease, the drug’s developers say. But some researchers question its effectiveness.

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  5. Animals

    Gray wolves scare deer from roads, reducing dangerous collisions

    The predators use roads as travel corridors, creating “a landscape of fear” that keeps deer away and saves millions of dollars a year, a study finds.

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  6. Astronomy

    An arc of galaxies 3 billion light-years long may challenge cosmology

    Dubbed “the Giant Arc,” the purported structure is much larger than expected in a cosmos where matter is thought to be evenly distributed.

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  7. Paleontology

    Something mysteriously wiped out about 90 percent of sharks 19 million years ago

    Deep sediments beneath the Pacific Ocean revealed a mystery: a massive shark die-off with no obvious cause.

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  8. Physics

    Nuclear clocks could outdo atomic clocks as the most precise timepieces

    Better clocks could improve technologies that depend on them, such as GPS navigation, and help test fundamental ideas of physics.

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  9. Animals

    The mere sight of illness may kick-start a canary’s immune system

    Healthy canaries ramp up their immune systems when exposed to visibly sick birds, without actually being infected themselves.

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  10. Particle Physics

    In a first, neutrinos were caught interacting at the Large Hadron Collider

    Despite the LHC’s fame, all its detectors were oblivious to neutrinos. But not anymore.

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  11. Animals

    Newly recognized tricks help elephants suck up huge amounts of water

    New ultrasound imaging reveals what goes on inside a pachyderm’s trunk while feeding. It can snort water at the rate of 24 shower heads.

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  12. Particle Physics

    Physicists dream big with an idea for a particle collider on the moon

    A lunar particle collider that dwarfs any such facility on Earth might not be impossible, according to new calculations.

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  13. Health & Medicine

    Food that boosts gut microbes could be a new way to help malnourished kids

    Malnourished children in Bangladesh fed a food aimed at restoring gut health grew more than those who got a traditional high-calorie supplement.

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  14. Archaeology

    New clues suggest people reached the Americas around 30,000 years ago

    Ancient rabbit bones from a Mexican rock-shelter point to humans arriving on the continent as much as 10,000 years earlier than often assumed.

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  15. Animals

    Mouse sperm thrived despite six years of exposure to space radiation

    A space station experiment suggests future deep-space explorers don’t need to worry about passing the effects of space radiation on to their children.

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  16. Health & Medicine

    50 years ago, scientists found a virus lurking in human cancer cells

    In 1971, scientists were building a case for viruses as a cause of cancer. Fifty years later, cancer-preventing vaccines are now a reality.

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