Uncategorized
- Life
Boas take pulse as they snuff it out
Snakes use the waning throb in their prey as a signal to stop squeezing.
- Psychology
Babies lip-read before talking
Tots acquire the gift of gab by matching adults’ mouth movements to spoken words.
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- Life
Rising carbon dioxide confuses brain signaling in fish
Nerve cells respond to acidifying waters.
- Physics
String theorists squeeze nine dimensions into three
A supercomputer simulation of the Big Bang’s immediate aftermath may explain why space has three directions.
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Pharmacologist drinks heavy water in experiment
Self-experimenter drank heavy water, then lived a long life.
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Science Past for January 27, 1962
“SPACE WHISKERS” GROWN FOR NEW SPACE MATERIALS — Microscopically small “space whiskers” are being grown by scientists at Rocketdyne, a division of North American Aviation, Inc., Canoga Park, Calif., in search of methods of producing extremely strong new space materials. The fine filament-like crystals are being grown from many materials — lead, tin, copper, graphite, […]
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Science Future for January 28, 2012
February 9 Learn about the science of wine and even stomp some grapes with your bare feet at the Durham, N.C., Museum of Life + Science. See bit.ly/syIeOC February 13 Enjoy an after-hours tour highlighting displays of love in exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Learn more at bit.ly/zRko4O
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SN Online
SCIENCE & SOCIETYPlants, algae and fungi can now be named online and in English. Read “Botanists et al freed from Latin, paper.” Thomas Libby, Evan Chang-Siu, Pauline Jennings, Courtesy of PolyPEDAL Lab & CiBER/UC Berkeley LIFE Videos and robots show how reptiles use their tails to balance in midair. See “Measuring the leap of a […]
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Letters
The eyes have it Just finished the latest issue of your spectacular magazine. I’ve been a reader for many years, but this is the first time I’ve felt compelled to write in. In the article about the tadpole (“Tiny voltage grows eyes in strange places,” SN: 12/31/11, p. 5), the final sentence is a quote […]
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Auroras by Dan Bortolotti
Striking images illuminate this exploration of one of nature’s greatest light shows. Firefly, 2011, 143 p., $29.95
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You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself by David McRaney
Forty-six of the brain’s everyday fallacies and cognitive biases are highlighted in an expansion of the author’s blog about the neuroscience of self-delusion. Gotham Books, 2011, 300 p., $22.50
