Uncategorized
- Paleontology
Asian amber yields oldest known bee
A tiny chunk of amber from Southeast Asia contains the remains of a bee that's at least 35 million years older than any reported fossil of similar bees.
By Sid Perkins - Astronomy
Black hole survey
Scanning the sky for high-energy X rays, a NASA satellite found more than 200 supermassive black holes within 400 million light-years of Earth.
By Ron Cowen - Earth
Farm salmon spread deadly lice
In the Pacific Northwest, sea lice that spread from cultivated salmon to their wild counterparts have become major parasites affecting the wild population.
By Ben Harder - Chemistry
Were Viking landers blind to life?
The Viking landers may have missed potential signs of life when they explored Mars in 1976.
- Earth
The African source of the Amazon’s fertilizer
More than half of the airborne dust that provides vital nutrients to the Amazonian rainforest comes from a small corner of the Sahara.
By Sid Perkins - Anthropology
Evolution’s Mystery Woman
A heated debate has broken out among anthropologists over whether a highly publicized partial skeleton initially attributed to a new, tiny species of human cousins actually comes from a pygmy Homo sapiens with a developmental disorder.
By Bruce Bower - Earth
Dashing Rogues
Rogue waves, which tower over the waves that surround them, are probably more common than scientists had previously suspected.
By Sid Perkins -
19755
In this article on rogue waves, you make no mention of the use of satellite data, which is ideal for this sort of study. Two projects, in particular, are of great relevance: the European Union’s MaxWave study and the subsequent WaveAtlas project. The former, with just 3 weeks’ data, identified 10 rogue waves above 25 […]
By Science News - Humans
Letters from the November 18, 2006, issue of Science News
Sunny side heads up “Rare Uranian eclipse” (SN: 9/9/06, p. 166) tells us, “Because the moons of Uranus orbit at the planet’s equator, the sun seldom illuminates them directly.” I think what you mean is that the moons seldom pass directly between Uranus and the sun. But surely the sun still illuminates them, even when […]
By Science News - Humans
From the November 7, 1936, issue
A tree's age, testing flu vaccine, and the polar ozone layer.
By Science News - Humans
Protecting Consumers
The Federal Trade Commission has launched a blog associated with its public hearings on “Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade,” held Nov. 6-8, 2006. The hearings examined how evolving technology will shape and change the habits, opportunities, and challenges of consumers and businesses in the coming decade. It featured experts from the business, government, and […]
By Science News - Tech
The Little Chill: Tiny wind generator to cool microchip hot spots
By generating a tiny cooling wind, a microscale silicon needle armed with a powerful electric field has demonstrated its potential as a new way to cool increasingly hot microchips.
By Peter Weiss