Science writing news

Birth control is free at last — a year from now. It includes sterilization and probably the coming contraceptives for men. The death of Amy Winehouse, addiction, and withdrawal from alcohol. How will the debt-ceiling legislation affect science and medicine?

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Neuroscience explains the debt-limit crisis for you. The incredible shrinking brain. Is there life beyond Earth? Perhaps not. Protecting human research subjects. Find the Higgs boson at home in your spare time! Correction %^(. Human embryonic stem cells get their day in court.

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Height and hormones. Should birth control be free? Does coffee prevent Alzheimer's disease? Should medical journalists be advocating early mammograms? Competition alert: Ed Yong is now a full-time freelance, gulp. Get your Google+ invite here.

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Personal blogging is dead because of Google+. Or not. By faking a vaccination program, the CIA gets bin Laden family DNA. Or not. In any case, public health authorities are outraged and fear more anti-vaccine propaganda.

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SciAm's new blog network is up, with 55 swell bloggers. How can the rest of us get any work done? A new autism twin study says environment matters more than genes, but others don't agree. Does which one matters more really matter?

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The World Conference of Science Journalists meets, greets, and tweets. Free E. coli papers. Pharma STEPS toward getting docs to prescribe more drugs. Drug effects in the elderly. New blogs from Kaiser Health News, JAMA, and Laura Newman.

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It's E. coli all the way down--with an impressive moral dimension.

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