Uncategorized
- Tech
Bizarre Stuff
Curious about airships or zoetropes? Want to build one? Created by Brian Carusella, this Web site spotlights unusual inventions and bizarre items. For each object, the site offers a history and review of how it was constructed. It features lots of ideas for interesting science projects and home experiments, along with easy-to-follow advice. Go to: […]
- Humans
From the January 18, 1936, issue
A small model of a large telescope, pain relief for angina, and the lightest solid ever known.
- Earth
Sinking Mercury: Light-based reactions destroy toxic chemical in Arctic lakes
Sunlight triggers the entry of poisonous mercury into polar lakes, but it also removes most of the toxic compound before fish can consume it.
- Physics
Thermonuclear Squeeze: Altered method extends bubble-fusion claim
A technique that some scientists claim generates thermonuclear fusion in a benchtop apparatus apparently works even without its controversial neutron trigger.
- Astronomy
Pay Dirt: Cometary dust collector comes home
A capsule containing dust collected from the comet Wild-2 safely landed in the Utah desert.
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Intrinsic Remedies for Pain: Placebo effect may take various paths in brain
The brain draws on a range of pain-fighting options when people receive sham treatments for pain.
- Earth
Diabetes from a Plastic? Estrogen mimic provokes insulin resistance
Exposure to trace amounts of an estrogenlike ingredient of polycarbonate plastic may increase the risk of diabetes, experiments in mice show.
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Dieting to Save a Species: Mother parrots that eat less avoid excess of sons
New Zealand's endangered, flightless parrot population is recovering from a shortage of daughters now that conservationists are counting calories for the mothers.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Push: Finding pieces of a dark puzzle
A controversial new study, the first to use gamma-ray bursts to measure the expansion of the universe far back in time, hints that dark energy may not be constant in time.
- Health & Medicine
Defenses Down: Mutation boosts West Nile risk
A genetic mutation has been identified that increases a person's susceptibility to West Nile virus.
- Astronomy
Images reveal possible origin of young stars
Astronomers say they have solved the riddle of how young, massive stars can reside so close to the monster black hole at the Milky Way's center.
- Planetary Science
One star better than two?
Rather than disrupting the planet-forming process around another star, a nearby companion may sometimes enhance it, new computer simulations suggest.
