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Science

Black swifts, with their preference for nesting on steep, wet, cold rock faces, are among the most enigmatic birds in North America.

What is North America’s Most Mysterious Bird?

Nesting behind waterfalls and in caves, the rarely seen black swift is only beginning to shed its secrets

The USS Zumwalt, the Navy’s next-generation warship. The 600-foot, 15,000-ton vessels is being built by General Dynamics in Maine at the Bath Iron Works.

Introducing the USS Zumwalt, the Stealth Destroyer

Set to be christened in 2013, this new naval warship will amaze, leaving almost no wake in the open seas

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Newly Discovered Comet, Headed Toward Earth, Could Shine as Bright as the Moon

Comet C/2012 S1(ISON) could become the brightest comet anyone alive has ever seen

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Triceratops Wasn’t Toxic

Triceratops was an awesome dinosaur, but, despite one site’s claim, it wasn’t equipped with poisonous quills

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Winged Tapestries

Jim des Rivières’ portraits of moths capture the insects’ exquisite patterns

Does greed live here?

How Brains Make Money

A new breed of scientists says that if you want to understand why people make financial decisions, you need to see what’s going on inside their brains

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Scientists Invent Electronic Circuits That Dissolve in Water

The new type of temporary electronics could be implanted in the body or used to monitor the environment without a need for cleanup afterward

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Where’s My Clone-o-saurus?

Physicist Michio Kaku says we’ll be able to clone dinosaurs in the future, but he glosses over some crucial technicalities

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VIDEO: Watch This Carnivorous Plant Fling an Insect Into Its Mouth

A small plant native to Australia features two sets of touch-sensitive tentacles to catapult insects towards its digestive concavity and then draw them in deeper

Dating and mapping fossil finds is one way anthropologists track early human migrations. The bones from Qafzeh, Israel, (a drawing of one of the skulls, above) indicate Homo sapiens first left Africa more than 100,000 years ago.

How to Retrace Early Human Migrations

Anthropologists rely on a variety of fossil, archaeological, genetic and linguistic clues to reconstruct how people populated the world

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Science Images that Border on Art

This year’s Wellcome Image Award winners pull at your “art” strings. The curious seek out the science behind them

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The Latest Cure for Acne: A Virus

Researchers are looking into a naturally-occuring virus which preys upon the skin bacteria that trigger outbreaks of acne

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Dino Time Botches Dino Feathers

Feathered dinosaurs are wonderful, but DinoTime 3D makes them look stupid

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Technicalities Tangle Tarbosaurus Case

A new development in the ongoing Tarbosaurus struggle complicates attempts to send the dinosaur home

Baxter, a robot that can work with humans.

Hope and Change: 5 Innovation Updates

Here’s the latest on robots that work with humans, a revolutionary camera, home 3-D printers, mobile wallets and Google’s driverless car

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Who Needs a Boss When You Have Your Co-Workers?

In a new book, Steven Johnson encourages us to lose top-down hierarchies, typical of companies, and instead organize around peer networks

Fossil swim tracks indicate that theropods similar to this Megapnosaurus at least occasionally swam in prehistoric lakes and rivers.

Did Dinosaurs Swim?

Carnivorous theropod dinosaurs were thought to be hydrophobic, but swim tracks show that these predators at least sometimes took a dip in lakes and rivers

In a new study, scientists evaluated female job applicants as less competent and hireable than males, even though their credentials were identical.

Are Scientists Sexist? New Study Identifies a Gender Bias

A new study indicates that the gatekeepers of science, whether male or female, are less likely to hire female applicants to work in labs

Neanderthals may have collected feathers from dark birds, such as black vultures (shown), for ornamental purposes, a new study suggests.

Do Feathers Reveal Neanderthal Brainpower?

Neanderthals may have used feathers as personal ornaments, which suggests our cousins were capable of symbolic expression

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Top 5 “Science Done Right” Moments in Movies

Directors take note: scientist and author David Kirby commends the accuracy in these popular films

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