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Engineers have figured out a way to get crystals to form rose and tulip sculptures, each smaller than a strand of hair. The gardens sprout up spontaneously on a penny dipped in a salt solution. The technique is similar to 3-D printing and could, one day, be used to make any complex shape.

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May 16, 2013 The news that scientists have successfully cloned a human embryo seems almost certain to rekindle a political fight that has raged, on and off, since the creation of Dolly the sheep. It's a fight that has, over the past decade and a half, produced a lot of heat and light and not a lot of policy.

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May 15, 2013 After decades of trying, scientists say they've finally figured out how to make personalized embryonic stem cells. One day, these designer cells may help treat an array of diseases. A jolt of caffeine and and a little electric shock helped to do the trick.

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May 15, 2013 The achievement is a long-sought step toward harnessing the potential power of such cells to treat diseases. But the discovery raises ethical concerns because it brings researchers closer to cloning humans.

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May 9, 2013 Scientists used to think that identical twins turned out differently because they were treated differently by friends, teachers or their parents. A study of mice supports the idea that small changes in behavior can lead to larger ones and eventually even resculpt brains in different ways.

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April 29, 2013 People crave explanations that are simple, broad, elegant. But the prettiest, most satisfying explanations aren't always the best explanations, as the dark story of Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel makes clear.

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April 26, 2013 Scientists have deployed hundreds of tiny, experimental robots to help with biopsies. They're as small as a speck of dust. They look like tiny ninja throwing stars. And researchers use magnets to retrieve them.

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April 26, 2013 An oversight committee halted a big clinical study of an experimental HIV vaccine after a peek at preliminary results showed there was no way the study would be able show the vaccine works. More vaccinated people became infected with HIV than those who got placebo shots.

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April 25, 2013 When researchers turned on a gene for the hormone in the livers of diabetic lab mice, the number of insulin-making cells in their pancreas glands tripled within 10 days. Although the research was conducted in animals, the scientists say the findings could be relevant for humans.

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April 25, 2013 When Superstorm Sandy flooded lower Manhattan last year, thousands of lab animals drowned and many scientists lost months or even years of work. The specialty animals can be very difficult to replace, but researchers say the loss of animal life is emotionally devastating and difficult to get over.

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April 17, 2013 Research in mice suggests that short-term hearing loss caused by loud noise like rock concerts may protect ears from more serious damage. But adapting to noise can be dangerous if you compensate by turning up the volume even higher, researchers warn.

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April 11, 2013 A prominent male chin, thought to be a marker for virility, is one of the characteristics that's part of the so-called universal facial attractiveness hypothesis. But a look at chins from around the world raises doubts.

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April 11, 2013 Researchers say they can measure how much pain someone is experiencing and even watch as prescription painkillers relieve it. The scanning technique could help doctors treat pain better, but the work is also fraught with questions about how the technology could interfere with the relationship between doctors and patients.

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April 10, 2013 Infants received different levels of oxygen to see which was better at preventing blindness without increasing the risk of nerve damage or death. But the federal government says doctors in the study didn't tell parents enough in advance about the "foreseeable risks" to their children.

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April 9, 2013 Drug companies have developed several Alzheimer's drugs that seemed to work in mice but did not help people with the disease. So scientists inserted human genes into rats in hopes of getting a better model for testing the drugs.

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