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“Tumor Tracker” — The Discovery Files
Engineers at Purdue University created a tiny wireless device that can be implanted in a tumor to allow doctors to pinpoint its exact position to more effectively administer radiation treatments. Their device will be like a capsule placed into a tumor …
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“Self Help Group” — The Discovery Files
Social psychologists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, are studying cultural differences that affect how people seek support from their social networks. Contrary to popular thought, people from collectivistic cultures do not often seek …
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“Robo Cup” — The Discovery Files
Putting her research into practice, the head of Carnegie Mellon’s CORAL (Cooperate, Observe, Reason, Act, and Learn) lab founded a robot soccer dynasty. Manuella Veloso’s research on artificial intelligence focused on duplicating the success with which…
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“The Smell of Money” — The Discovery Files
Most of us are familiar with the smell from a handful of coins, or perhaps a sweaty dumbbell or metal pipe. Turns out that so-called “metallic” odor is actually not from the metal object itself. Researchers from Virginia Tech found that the smell is re…
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“Nut Case” — The Discovery Files
A study out of the University of Michigan is tracking the battle between blue spruce trees and red squirrels — a struggle that has become a survival of the wittiest. Earlier research documented the “swamp and starve” strategy of trees, in which they p…
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“About Face” — The Discovery Files
Researchers in Southern California identified specific regions of the brain that are associated with the recognition of identity, gender and ethnicity in faces. They found evidence of neurons that are tuned to these cues in an area of the brain not pre…
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“Think Small” — The Discovery Files
Working with platinum nanowires 100 times thinner than a human hair, a team of U.S. and Japanese researchers demonstrated a technique that may one day allow doctors to monitor individual brain cells and perhaps provide new treatments for neurological d…
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“Power Play” — The Discovery Files
Inspired by an uncharged cell phone in the middle of the night, an MIT researcher thought “wouldn’t it be great if this thing charged itself?” So, he looked to known physics principles to uncover new ways to transmit energy. He and his colleagues did f…
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“Storm Warming” — The Discovery Files
New study finds that human activities are boosting ocean temperatures and likely increasing hurricane intensity. Rising ocean temperatures in key hurricane breeding grounds of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are due primarily to human-caused increases …
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“Summer Retreat” — The Discovery Files
New research from the National Center for Atmospheric Research indicates that the recent retreat of Arctic sea ice is likely to accelerate so rapidly that the Arctic Ocean could become nearly devoid of ice during the summer over the next few decades. R…