STARDUST WITH RED GIANT FINGERPRINTS. Heavier elements are assembled out of lighter elements inside stars. For roughly half the nuclei heavier than iron-56, nucleosynthesis proceeds slowly (hence the name "s process") by the addition of one neutron at a time. The observed and calculated (based on s-process models) abundances of elements mostly agree; one notable exception is the isotopically anomalous neodymium found in carbonaceous meteorites. Partly to investigate this discrepancy and partly to accommodate the latest theories which hold that the s process is prevalent at solar energies of 6-8 keV (corresponding to temperatures of 69-93 million K) rather than 30 keV as was previously thought, scientists at Oak Ridge have performed difficult new scattering experiments in the lab. Using neutrons from the Oak Ridge Electron Linear Accelerator (ORELA) they have re-measured with much greater precision the likelihood of a neutron being captured by the nuclides ¹⁴²Nd and ¹⁴⁴Nd and have translated this into reaction rates within stars. Their findings (contact Klaus Guber,guber@mail.phy.ornl.gov) help to explain the Nd anomaly, confirming that the ¹⁴²Nd isotopic distribution in certain microscopic dust grains in some meteorites originated in low mass red giant stars under the auspices of the s process. This work may have implications for "r-process" models, which prescribe how even heavier nuclei are made rapidly in supernovas, and for theories of how our solar system came about. (K. Guber et al., Physical Review Letters, 7 April.)