Uncategorized
- Math
Slide Rule Universe
Nowadays, calculators and computers are essential tools for scientists and engineers. A few decades ago, however, an ingenious calculating device called the slide rule was in every engineer’s toolbox. This Web site provides a glimpse of those long-gone days. It provides references materials on the care, feeding, and use of slide rules, a slide-rule marketplace, […]
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Epidemiologist Scott Davis warns, “Melatonin supplements are not regulated” the way drugs are. . . . “There may be all kinds of impurities and contaminants.” Are you really going to tell me that you aren’t going to take melatonin—if you’re convinced that it might lower your chance of getting cancer by as much as 50 […]
- Health & Medicine
Bright Lights, Big Cancer
A woman's blood provides better sustenance for breast cancer just after she's been exposed to bright light than when she's been in steady darkness.
- Astronomy
Gauging Star Birth: Spacecraft uses gamma rays as stellar tracer
Using radioactive material spewed into space by dying stars, astronomers have measured the star-formation rate in our galaxy over the past few million years.
- Earth
Mass movement
Two satellites designed to note small changes in Earth's gravitational field detected effects of the magnitude 9.3 earthquake that occurred west of Sumatra on Dec. 26, 2004.
- Physics
Quantum Chip: Device handles ions as if they were data
A new microchip can trap and move an ion, preliminary steps toward carrying out quantum computations on a chip.
- Animals
Locust Upset: DNA puts swarmer’s origin in Africa
The desert locust was not an ancient export from the Americas, according to a new DNA analysis.
- Humans
Letters from the January 7, 2006, issue of Science News
Death in the Americas I was wondering if researchers have given any thought to the idea that in the same way that disease devastated human populations after the European discovery of the Americas, perhaps disease was a contributing factor in the demise of much of the fauna of the Western Hemisphere (“Caribbean Extinctions: Climate change […]
- Chemistry
Molecular Car Park: Material packs in carbon dioxide
A porous, crystalline material composed of metal and organic building blocks holds more carbon dioxide than other porous substances do.
- Earth
Gunning for the Gut: Tiny particles might fight invasive zebra mussels
By modifying a technique used to flavor foods, researchers have made a substance that poisons the zebra mussel.
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It seems to me irresponsible even to float the idea, as neurologist David M. Holtzman does in this article, of chemically suppressing idle thought and daydreaming in people. Who can claim a basis for clinical discrimination of “bad” idle thought and daydreaming from the “idle thought” of intuitive problem solving and poetic imagination? More of […]
- Health & Medicine
Alzheimer Clue: Busy brain connections may have downside
Brain areas that are chronically activated have excess amyloid beta, the waxy protein associated with Alzheimer's disease.
