Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Statins for Algernon: Cholesterol-lowering drug fights learning disability
A study in mice suggests that a drug prescribed for high cholesterol may reverse learning deficits caused by a common genetic disease.
- Health & Medicine
Protective Progeny: Peptide treats and prevents breast cancer
A synthetic version of a protein present in a woman's body during pregnancy is as effective against breast cancer as the current drug tamoxifen is, according to a study in rodents.
- Anthropology
Gone with the Flow: Ancient Andes canals irrigated farmland
Excavations in the Andes mountains have unearthed the earliest known irrigation canals in South America.
- Humans
Letters from the November 12, 2005, issue of Science News
Big leap The pendular running gait described in “Stepping Lightly: New view of how human gaits conserve energy” (SN: 9/17/05, p. 182) as one of the most efficient bipedal gaits looks remarkably like the way eyewitnesses claim Bigfoot creatures move. In a Bigfoot hoax, one might use a gait that is unhuman but energy efficient, […]
- Paleontology
Big bird terrorized South America
Researchers in Argentina have discovered fossils that may represent the heftiest flightless bird to ever have roamed the planet.
- Paleontology
Tusk analyses suggest weaning took years
Changes in the proportions of various chemical isotopes deposited in mammoth tusks as they grew have enabled scientists to estimate how long it took juvenile mammoths to become fully weaned.
- Paleontology
Mmmm, that’s crunchy
Isotopic analyses of the teeth of otters and mongooses from Africa have led one paleontologist to suggest that some of humanity's ancient kin shared those modern animals' preference for shelled prey such as freshwater crabs and snails.
- Physics
Revisiting Einstein’s incomplete theory
New, ultraprecise measurements of single-particle trajectories confirm that there's something missing from Einstein's mathematical model for Brownian motion.
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19611
This article says, “the blood of people who consume 3 to 6 drinks weekly was less likely to clot in a test tube than was the blood from nondrinkers.” I wonder if there is a rebound effect that could make the blood of new abstainers even more likely to clot than that of regular nondrinkers. […]
- Health & Medicine
A toast to thin blood
Moderate consumption of alcohol may make a person's blood less likely to clot.
- Physics
That’s the Way the Spaghetti Crumbles
Investigating how uncooked spaghetti breaks has uncovered new mechanisms behind shattering and energy concentration, with possible implications for how structures fail.
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19610
I would venture to suggest the reason that the pasta-fragmentation process stops. Once the strand breaks, it becomes x number of new strands, each of which is still vibrating at some residual frequency and amplitude. The mass, diameter, and length of each resultant strand might determine the wavelength and amplitude necessary to break it. If […]
