Uncategorized
- Anthropology
Erectus Ahoy
A researcher who explores the nautical abilities of Stone Age people by building rafts and having crews row them across stretches of ocean contends that language and other cognitive advances emerged 900,000 years ago with Homo erectus, not considerably later among modern humans, as is usually assumed.
- Humans
From the October 7, 1933, issue
ANCIENT MAP SHOWS HOW WORLD LOOKED TO COLUMBUS Startled to find the name Columbus mentioned on an old Turkish map of the Atlantic Ocean, Paul Kahle has subjected the map to closest study, finding on it important new clues to the discovery of America. In a report on his investigations, to appear in the forthcoming […]
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Moral Sense
How do humans throughout the world decide what is right and wrong? Harvard researchers have designed a test, which consists of a series of moral dilemmas, to probe the psychological mechanisms underlying ethical judgments. The online test takes only about 10 minutes, and responses are completely confidential. Go to: http://moral.wjh.harvard.edu/index.html
- Math
Goldbach Computations
In 1742, historian and mathematician Christian Goldbach (1690–1764) wrote a letter to Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) in which he suggested, in effect, that every integer greater than 5 is the sum of three prime numbers. A prime number is evenly divisible only by itself and 1. Nowadays, Goldbach’s conjecture is expressed in the following equivalent form: […]
- Earth
Toxic Controversy: Perchlorate found in milk, but risk is debated
Researchers in Texas have detected the chemical perchlorate in milk, crops, and a significant portion of the state's groundwater.
- Humans
Nobel prizes go to scientists harnessing odd phenomena
The 2003 Nobel prizes in the sciences were announced early this week.
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19279
Your article didn’t include even a hint about the controversy about the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Many people believe that Raymond Damadian should have gotten at least a share in the prize. Damadian saw and demonstrated the potential for using MRI as a medical-scanning technique when others found the idea laughable. David L. […]
- Neuroscience
Restoring Recall: Memories may form and reform, with sleep
Two new studies indicate that memories, at least for skills learned in a laboratory, undergo a process of storage and restorage that depends critically on sleep.
- Animals
Bad Bubbles: Could sonar give whales the bends?
Odd bubbles of fat and gas have turned up in the bodies of marine mammals, raising the question of whether something about human activity in the oceans could give these deep divers decompression sickness.
- Tech
Special Delivery: Metallic nanorods shuttle genes
A new gene therapy technique relies on nanorods made of gold and nickel to deliver genes to cells in the body.
- Astronomy
Super Data: Hail the cosmic revolution
Ten extremely distant supernovas recently discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope provide evidence that something is pushing objects in the cosmos apart at an ever-faster rate.
- Earth
When Genes Escape
The focus of the debate over transgenic crops has changed from whether genes will escape to what difference it will make when they do.
