Uncategorized
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Mystic Stuff
Scientists describe and ponder their own brushes with spiritual, mystical, and psychic happenings in the online journal called The Archives of Scientists’ Transcendent Experiences (TASTE). Psychologist Charles T. Tart of the University of California, Davis, produces the journal and hopes to build a database of accounts by bona fide, show-me-the-data researchers for future investigations into […]
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19192
Your article shows hazy pictures from Great Smoky Mountains National Park and says the cause of the haze is “volatile organic compounds released by trees.” I’m the air-quality specialist in the park, and I know that 60 percent of the particle mass in the air is sulfate from power plants, not trees, and 80 percent […]
- Earth
Solving Hazy Mysteries
Aerosols such as smoke, soot, and sea spray make for hazy vistas and stunning sunrises, but they also play major roles in Earth's climate and atmospheric chemistry.
- Health & Medicine
Food Forays
Ever wonder what the Vikings ate on their lengthy voyages to new lands? What pioneers cooked on their treks along the Oregon Trail? Who invented the potato chip? The fascinating answers to these and many other food-related questions can be found at the Food Timeline, a collection of links to related Web pages, compiled by […]
- Health & Medicine
Natural fluoride isn’t quite enough
In the absence of a public water-fluoridation program in eastern Germany, natural background concentrations of fluoride in drinking water affect children’s dental health.
- Earth
Child-care sites, health threats
Federal agencies have completed the first national study of lead, pesticides, and allergens in U.S. child-care facilities.
- Animals
Hawkmoths can still see colors at night
For the first time, scientists have found detailed evidence than an animal—a hawkmoth—can see color by starlight.
- Tech
Resistancefree wire takes long jump
A wire-making company has demonstrated a process that yields potentially inexpensive, high-current superconducting wires about 10 times longer than previous prototypes.
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19203
Many people who are exploring the possible connection between childhood vaccines and autism claim that the culprit is not the vaccines themselves, but the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal. Does the Danish MMR vaccine contain it? Anne SealsSumner, Wash. Thimerosal has never been used in the MMR vaccine, either in the United States or in Denmark .–B. […]
- Health & Medicine
Study exonerates childhood vaccine
A nationwide study in Denmark provides strong evidence that a childhood vaccine once blamed for some cases of autism plays no role in the development of that neurological disorder.
- Astronomy
Galactic cannibalism strikes again
Astronomers have discovered the remains of a tiny galaxy that was swallowed by the galaxy Centaurus A only a few hundred million years ago.
- Earth
El Niños came more often in Middle Ages
Analyses of layered sediments from a South American lake suggest that the worldwide warm spells known as El Niños occurred more frequently about 1,200 years ago, when Europe was entering the Middle Ages, than they do today.
