Uncategorized
- Psychology
Skateboarders rock physics
Skateboarding develops intuition about slope speeds unavailable to most people.
- Psychology
‘Gorilla man’ goes unheard
Paying attention to what others say can make listeners totally unaware of unexpected sounds.
- Space
Atom & Cosmos
An asteroid's star turn, a 520-day mission to nowhere and the brightest millisecond pulsar ever.
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Love affair with statistics gives science a significant problem
Scientists love statistical significance. It offers a way to test hypotheses. It’s a ticket to publishing, to media coverage, to tenure. It’s also a crock — statistically speaking, anyway. You know the idea. When scientists perform an experiment and their data suggest an important result — say, that watching TV causes influenza — there’s always the nagging concern that the finding […]
- Health & Medicine
First brain image of a dream created
Feat opens the door to probing the stuff of nocturnal dramas.
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Cornell project brings peregrines back to the eastern United States
With a little help, peregrine falcons make a comeback from the devastating effects of DDT.
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Letters
Defining the human species Having read “Humans benefited by interbreeding” (SN: 10/8/11, p. 13), I wonder if I have missed what, to me, seems a major change in the definition of “species.” I was taught that the attempted crossbreeding of animals of two different species could result in either no offspring or sterile offspring. If […]
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SN Online
LIFE Cycads, often called “dinosaur plants,” aren’t so ancient after all. Read “Cycads not ‘living fossils.’ “ HUMANS Ancient cooking pots show diets shifted slowly from fishing to agriculture. See “Early farmers’ fishy menu.“ ON THE SCENE BLOG The Drake Equation for tallying alien life turns 50. See “The Drake Equation: All in the family,” […]
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Science Future for November 19, 2011
November 22Learn cocktail chemistry at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Go to www.hmns.org December 1Explore all things that glow at San Francisco’s Exploratorium. Ages 18 and up. See www.exploratorium.edu/afterdark December 5Make folded structures in a workshop at St. Paul’s Science Museum of Minnesota. See www.smm.org/librarylaboratory
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Science Past from the issue of November 18, 1961
NEW EVIDENCE FOUND OF EXPANDING UNIVERSE — The universe is expanding, then collapsing again after a long time, evidence from photographs taken with the 200-inch telescope atop Mt. Palomar indicate. Dr. William A. Baum of Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories, Pasadena, Calif., said that present-day observations are not compatible with a steady-state universe in which […]
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Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech (Synthesis) by Sally Smith Hughes
A genetic engineering company’s meteoric rise illustrates the development of the biotech industry. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2011, 213 p., $25
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Better than Human: The Promise and Perils of Enhancing Ourselves (Philosophy in Action) by Allen Buchanan
A philosopher examines biomedical enhancement — from improving memory to increasing stamina — and approaches to its future applications. Oxford Univ. Press, 2011, 199 p., $21.95
