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Explore the most exciting new ideas and emerging concepts in science, health, technology and the environment with Â鶹´«Ã½â€™s exclusive in-depth articles, interviews and long reads.

The birth of elements

When Supernova 1987A exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, it cast a brilliant light on astrophysics / How elements other than hydrogen and helium are created inside stars and spread across the Universe by stellar explosions

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Esprit gives Brussels a good name: The success of Europe’s ten-year research programme on information technology has overturned the notion that Brussels is merely a comfortable haven for overpaid administrators

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High noon on the Maasai Mara

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The origins of autism

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Tibet – continents in collision: Chinese and Western earth scientists traversed Tibet together for the first time in 1985 to find out what happens when continents collide. Now the political clampdown has put the plateau out of reach again

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A bumpy path to the national curriculum: Under a law passed last year, all teachers at state schools in England and Wales are now required to teach a national curriculum. Some are buckling under the strain, particularly those who are grappling with scien

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Rules of the gender game: Even four-year-olds know what is ‘appropriate’ to their gender. Boys are keen to assert their masculinity, girls who try to play with the Lego find that the boys have already commandeered it

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Clocks and chaos in chemistry: Most chemists believe that the course of a chemical reaction is always predictable. But some catalytic reactions in both inorganic and organic chemistry can behave in bizarre and unruly ways

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A nursery for the rainforest: Restoring the rainforest to its former glory is an awesome but urgent task. The first step is to manufacture the ingredients of a forest – and foresters are trying every trick in the book to encourage tropical trees to grow

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Floods of aid for Bangladesh

At least 2000 people died in Bangladesh last year when a record flood inundated more than half the country. This month an international team of experts announces its plans to prevent the same thing happening again

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Can biotechnology pick up the pinta?: A dispute over the social implications of the hormone that raises milk production in cows has become a test case of the European consumer’s willingness to accept the products of biotechnology

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Is the Solar System stable? You might be surprised to learn that the Earth’s orbit round the Sun, like those of other planets, is chaotic. What does this mean for the future of the Solar System?

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A stirring tale of crystals and currents: Fingers and fountains of salt in the seas have given geologists a new perspective: fluid dynamics is the vital ingredient in the recipe to stir magma and crystallise rocks

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Thailand’s million-dollar moth: Traditional silk from Thailand is unlike the mass-produced fabrics of China and India. If the country is to revive its silk industry, it must look to its misshapen native silk worm for support

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