Uncategorized
- Materials Science
Explosive tempers
Researchers have demonstrated that carbon nanotubes, once ignited, can detonate explosives.
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19604
I very much enjoyed this article. What struck me, however, was a passage that mentioned the “bird’s resistance to the bends” and the researchers’ alleged inability to explain that. As a scuba diver, I know that the bends, or decompression sickness, is caused by breathing compressed air underwater. More nitrogen is absorbed in body tissue […]
- Animals
Cool Birds
Emperor penguins go to such extremes to cope with life in Antarctica that they've inspired interesting science as well as a hit movie.
- Health & Medicine
Antibodies Counter Diabetes
Monoclonal antibodies that target immune cells can save pancreatic cells from the immune system for more than a year in people with type 1 diabetes.
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- Earth
Iceberg Thrills
The Ocean World Web site offers lessons devoted to icebergs, accompanied by dramatic images. Students can learn about the different colors of icebergs, their classification, and their life cycle. The Web site also presents the dangers that icebergs pose to people as well as their potential benefits to desert dwellers. It includes a glossary and […]
- Animals
Proxy Vampire: Spider eats blood by catching mosquitoes
Researchers studying food preferences among spiders report finding the first one with a taste for vertebrate blood.
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High Times for Brain Growth: Marijuana-like drug multiplies neurons
A drug that functions as concentrated marijuana does may spur the process by which the brain gives birth to new nerve cells.
- Chemistry
Chemical Dancing: Chemists choreograph molecular moves for Nobel honor
This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to three scientists for their work on a versatile strategy for synthesizing all manner of chemical compounds in an environmentally friendly way.
- Anthropology
Encore for Evolutionary Small-Timers: Tiny human cousins get younger with new finds
Excavations in an Indonesian cave have yielded more fossils of short, upright creatures that lived as recently as 12,000 years ago.
- Earth
Drought’s heat killed Southwest’s piñon forests
The heat accompanying a drought and a plague of bark beetles seem to explain the deaths of swathes of piñon pine trees across the Southwest in 2002 and 2003.
