Uncategorized
- Paleontology
Early life forms had a modular structure
Fossils recently discovered in northeastern Newfoundland reveal that some of Earth's earliest large organisms had modular body plans whose main architectural element was a branching, frondlike structure.
- Health & Medicine
Dentists: Eschew chewing aspirin
Chewing aspirin or just letting the tablets dissolve in the mouth can seriously damage teeth.
- Earth
PCBs can taint building caulk
Long-banned, toxic polychlorinated biphenyls in some building caulk applied in the 1960s and 1970s may still pose an exposure risk.
- Health & Medicine
Birthing age and ovarian cancer risk
Giving birth confers on women some protection against ovarian cancer, and the later in life the last pregnancy happens, the better the protection.
- Anthropology
Chimps mature with human ancestor
The Stone Age human ancestor Homo erectus grew at about the same pace as wild chimpanzees today do.
- Astronomy
Cassini eyes Iapetus
Only a few days after it entered orbit around Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft captured an image of Saturn's split- personality moon Iapetus.
- Earth
Parting Shots
Data collected during an 18-day barrage of major solar flares late last year—including a record-setting coronal mass ejection on Nov. 4—will help scientists refine models of flare formation and behavior.
-
19449
Your article says that sunspots are 3,500°C. Yet further in the article, it says that the solar flare of Nov. 4, 2003, was 41 million°C. Is that a typographical error? Bruce BarnbaumGranite Falls, Wash. That’s no typo. The release of magnetic energy in the sun’s atmosphere during a flare heats the material that’s been ejected […]
-
Deception Detection
Psychologists are trying to see whether the statistically significant deception signals found in laboratory experiments exist in high stakes, realistic lies, and whether real lie detectors, such as police officers and judges, are able to detect them.
-
19448
I just read “Deception Detection” and I must say that I am surprised that no one used high-limit poker players to analyze if a person is bluffing. The art of poker is calling people on their bluffs. Martin J. WagnerIndiana University A successful poker player must be able to bluff successfully, at least on occasion, […]
- Humans
Letters from the July 31, 2004, issue of Science News
More than child’s play? While reading about the amazing properties of Archimedes’ Stomachion (“Glimpses of Genius,” SN: 5/15/04, p. 314: Glimpses of Genius), I wondered whether a mere child’s toy would exhibit such mathematical precision, with each vertex falling on a lattice point of a 12-by-12 grid. Perhaps Archimedes took the basic plan of the […]
- Math
Math Olympiad in Athens
A team from the United States placed second in this year's International Mathematical Olympiad.
