Uncategorized

  1. Space

    Snapshot of a planet beyond the solar system

    After years of false alarms, astronomers may finally have recorded the first image of a planet orbiting a sunlike star beyond the solar system.

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  2. Math

    A knot of light

    Researchers find a new theoretical way to tie light into complex knots and links.

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  3. Materials Science

    A killer paint job

    New findings suggest that nanotechnology paints for walls, ceilings and surfaces could one day be used to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospitals.

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  4. Humans

    Teen depression: No genes required

    The family-shattering effects of a mother’s depression can prompt the same mood disorder in her children, independent of any genetic risk.

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  5. Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of Epidemiology by Geoffrey C. Kabat

    Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Health scares come and go, but they often have a tenuous scientific basis. Kabat, a cancer epidemiologist, systematically rips through cancer alerts that overrode scientific rigor in recent decades. In so doing, he dispels the dubious science underlying the scares and explains how public confusion can come about. A […]

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  6. The Brightest Stars: Discovering the Universe through the Sky’s Most Brilliant Stars by Fred Schaaf

    John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2008, 281 p., $19.95.

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  7. Coal River by Michael Shnayerson

    Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, 321 p., $25.

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  8. From Science News Letter, September 27, 1958

    PARKINSON’S DISEASE NO LONGER INCURABLE — Parkinsonism, or shaking palsy, is no longer a hopeless, progressive, incurable disease. A five-year follow-up study of 700 brain operations for Parkinsonism revealed that 80% of the properly selected cases found relief from the tremor, rigidity, deformity and incapacitation of parkinsonism after basal ganglia surgery. Furthermore, these symptoms can […]

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  9. Science Future for September 27, 2008

    October 3 Grid Fest at CERN in Geneva marks LHC’s computing grid going live. Visit lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG/lhcgridfest October 12–18 Earth Science Week 2008, sponsored by the American 
Geological Institute, celebrates “No Child Left Inside.” Visit www.earthsciweek.org October 20–21 Orionids meteor shower expected to peak. Visit 
www.imo.net/calendar/2008

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  10. Letters

    A climate tipping point In Janet Raloff’s article “Forest invades tundra” (SN: 7/5/08, p. 26), there seems to be a paradox. Raloff says that the albedo from normal snow coverage of the tundra “helps maintain the region’s chilly temperatures,” implying that the coverage also preserves the mats of plant matter. A little later in the […]

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  11. Corporate campaigns manufacture scientific doubt by David Michaels

    From the September 27, 2008 issue of Science News.

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  12. Astronomy

    Last Call

    The final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope could radically transform the observatory, but the crew faces some special challenges.

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