All Stories
- Humans
From the May 5, 1934, issue
Steel pipes of the Boulder Canyon project, diphtheria and the blood-brain barrier, and weather effects of volcanic eruptions.
- Astronomy
Closing In on a Monster: A black hole’s dusty environs show themselves
The first clear picture of the immediate surroundings of a supermassive black hole confirms that these gravitational monsters hide behind thick belts of dust.
- Health & Medicine
Cord Blood to the Rescue: Infusions help babies with Hurler’s syndrome
Umbilical cord blood transplants boost overall health and survival in patients with the rare hereditary condition called Hurler's syndrome.
- Materials Science
Next High-Tech Polishing Fluid: Tea—A new brew for the computer industry
A concoction based on green tea may speed up manufacturing of precision components for computer hard-disk drives while reducing toxic wastes.
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Waste Not: Proteins suggest ways to thwart muscle loss
Researchers have now revealed details of the biochemical signals that drive muscle atrophy.
- Paleontology
Ancient Buzzing: German site yields early hummingbird fossils
Excavations in Germany have yielded the only known fossils of hummingbirds from the Old World and by far the oldest such fossils unearthed anywhere.
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19416
The phenomenon described in your article, an animal manufacturing natural poisons using chemical precursors in the environment, has been described before—in a work of science fiction! In Arthur Herzog’s 1974 novel The Swarm, later made into a movie, killer bees learned to metabolize organophosphate insecticides and incorporate those molecules into their venom. Dave LeisingLowell, Mich.
- Animals
Toxin Takeout: Frogs borrow poison for skin from ants
Scientists have identified formicine ants as a food source from which poison frogs acquire their chemical weapons.
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19415
Other librarians and I regularly discuss illiterate, functional, aliterate, and avid readers. I am pleased that research has begun into what happens in readers’ brains. The study as presented, however, doesn’t seem to control for the individual attention given by the tutors, a factor that may have influenced the results. I hope this research continues. […]
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Words in the Brain: Reading program spurs neural rewrite in kids
Children who are deficient readers show improvement in both reading skills and brain function when given intensive instruction in how written letters correspond to speech sounds, a brain-imaging study finds.
- Humans
A National Science Museum
If you can’t make it to Washington, D.C., to visit the recently opened Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences, check out the museum’s online exhibits. Explore how DNA analysis can catch criminals and stop epidemics, witness the potential effects of global warming, and glimpse the frontiers of scientific research. Go to: […]
- Humans
Letters from the May 8, 2004, issue of Science News
Listen carefully Perhaps Stefan Koelsch’s study should have been limited to trained musicians, rather than exclude them (“Song Sung Blue: In brain, music and language overlap,” SN: 2/28/04, p. 133: Song Sung Blue: In brain, music and language overlap). Word and visual associations in music are vigorously reinforced in movie soundtracks, cartoons, and elsewhere. But […]
