Uncategorized
- Humans
From the January 30, 1937, issue
A new atomic gun, an old human skull, and making stronger rayon.
By Science News - Humans
Malaria Control
While you’re sending an e-mail or surfing the Web, your computer could be helping to tackle one of Africa’s major challenges: malaria. In a project coordinated by CERN, volunteer computers in homes and offices run a simulation program called MalariaControl.net, developed by researchers at the Swiss Tropical Institute. The program simulates how malaria spreads through […]
By Science News - Humans
Top Prospects for Tomorrow’s Labs: National competition yields a dream team of young scientific talent
Twenty young women and 20 young men aced an early challenge in their scientific careers by becoming finalists in the annual Intel Science Talent Search.
By Ben Harder - Physics
Waves from the Big Bang: Upcoming detectors may view newborn universe
Ripples in space-time may soon give scientists a glimpse of the universe as it looked a tiny fraction of a second after its birth.
- Animals
Bite This: Borrowed toad toxins save snake’s neck
An Asian snake gets toxins by salvaging them from the poisonous toads it eats.
By Susan Milius - Health & Medicine
Early Fix: Prion disease remedied in mice
Diseases caused by misfolded proteins called prions can be reversed if caught early enough, experiments in mice suggest.
By Nathan Seppa - Astronomy
Kaput: Hubble’s main camera stops working
The sharpest, most sensitive camera on the aging Hubble Space Telescope has stopped working.
By Ron Cowen - Earth
Disaster’s Consequences: Hurricane’s legacy includes arsenic
Construction debris strewn across the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina contains a disturbing amount of arsenic that could contaminate groundwater if not properly managed.
- Archaeology
Suburb of Stonehenge: Ritual village found near famed rock site
Excavations at a 4,600-year-old village in southern England indicate that it was occupied by the builders of nearby Stonehenge and hosted feasts where people assembled before transporting the dead to the huge circle of stones, which served as an ancestor memorial.
By Bruce Bower -
19788
No mention is made in this article of the huge amount of petrochemical inputs required both for large-scale farming of corn and for the distilling process required to produce ethanol. When these and other environmental costs are factored in, the promotion of corn-based ethanol as fuel will ultimately be exposed as an environmentally disastrous policy. […]
By Science News - Earth
Gas tanks could guzzle half of U.S. corn yields
Strong expansion of the U.S. corn-to-ethanol industry, now under way, stands poised to divert much of the grain from food uses to transportation fuel.
By Janet Raloff -
Plastics ingredient disrupts fetal-egg development
A common estrogen-mimicking chemical can damage eggs while an animal is still in the womb.