All Stories
- Ecosystems
Deep-Sea Cukes Can’t Avoid the Weather: El Niño changes life 2.5 miles down
A 14-year study of a spot 2.5 miles underwater off the California coast shows short-term links between surface events and an abundance of deep-water creatures.
- Earth
Quick Bite: Some gorges carved surprisingly fast
Analyses of rock samples from two river gorges along the Atlantic seaboard suggest that the largest parts of those chasms were carved during a geologically short period at the height of the last ice age.
- Physics
Inside Plastic Transistors: Crystal-clear window opens on hidden flows
By creating a new type of plastic transistor, researchers have identified crucial details regarding electric flow through plastic semiconductors.
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I have been puzzled at the consternation over the findings in this article. It’s common knowledge among people who treat patients with major depression that the time of greatest risk for suicide is when depression begins to lift. The person finally has more energy and mental focus but may still feel awful. Resolved never to […]
- Health & Medicine
Suicide Watch: Antidepressants get large-scale inspection
Data from the United Kingdom indicate that depressed patients attempt and complete suicides at an elevated rate in the 3 months after starting to take any of four antidepressant drugs.
- Health & Medicine
Seeing Red and Finding Fraudulent Fish
The sale of falsely labeled fish has implications for health, nutrition, and the environment.
- Humans
Letters from the July 24, 2004, issue of Science News
Whee! I can pretty easily tell what was going through the kiddo’s mind while trying “in vain to scoot down a miniature slide” (“Toddlers’ Supersize Mistakes: At times, children play with the impossible,” SN: 5/15/04, p. 308: Toddlers’ Supersize Mistakes: At times, children play with the impossible). 1. “Slides are fun. Why not pretend to […]
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This article shouldn’t make parents any less wary of allowing their children to come in contact with the chromated-copper arsenate wood structures. What children pick up on their hands from a deck or play set may wind up inside via hand-to-mouth transfers. John Peterson MyersWhite Hall, Va.
- Earth
Skin proves poor portal for arsenic in treated wood
Direct contact with old-style pressure-treated lumber should pose little risk that arsenic will penetrate the skin.
- Health & Medicine
New cholesterol guidelines advise more treatment
Citing results from five recent trials of anticholesterol statin drugs, U.S. health officials recommend that physicians use the drugs to treat many more patients with high cholesterol.
- Paleontology
Chipmunks in Wisconsin toughed out ice age
Analyses of DNA from chipmunks in parts of the U.S. Midwest hint that some populations of the creatures stayed in northern refuges rather than migrating south at the beginning of the last ice age.
- Animals
A first for mammals: Tropical hibernating
The fat-tailed lemur, the first tropical mammal documented to hibernate, exploits local heat spikes to save energy during the long snooze.
