The U.S. scientific enterprise has been spared the devastating effects of an automatic budget sequestration—for now—thanks to policymakers' last-minute passage of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012
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Sputnik 1 first streaked across the virgin heavens a half-century ago ushering in the Space Age. Since then the number of manmade objects circling the globe has swelled into the hundreds of thousands. Space-based systems such as Global Positioning System (GPS), telecommunications, and weather forecasting have become so woven into daily life that they are taken for granted.
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Arash Alaei and his brother Kamiar earned recognition and acclaim from the World Health Organization, the Asia Society, the Global Health Council, and other organizations for programs they started in Iran to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS.
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The observation of an elusive sub-atomic particle known as the Higgs boson has been heralded by the journal Science as the most important scientific discovery of 2012. This particle, which was first hypothesized to exist more than 40 years ago, holds the key to explaining how other elementary particles such as electrons and quarks (those that aren’t made up of smaller particles) get their mass.
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The new issue of Science & Diplomacy, AAAS’s quarterly publication, offers a framework for nations seeking to pursue science diplomacy and articles exploring a range of promising initiatives undertaken in Africa, the Middle East, and even in orbit above Earth.
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