Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Late nights and disease
Getting too little sleep may lead to health problems. A new study shows that after only one night of sleep deprivation, women have higher levels of an inflammatory molecule linked to cancer, heart disease and other illnesses.
- 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.
- Math
A knot of light
Researchers find a new theoretical way to tie light into complex knots and links.
- 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.
- 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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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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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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Coal River by Michael Shnayerson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, 321 p., $25.
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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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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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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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Corporate campaigns manufacture scientific doubt by David Michaels
From the September 27, 2008 issue of Science News.
