Uncategorized

  1. Earth

    Ocean View

    Ocean observatories have revealed unexpected discoveries, and now scientists want to widen the lens.

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  2. Humans

    From the December 3, 1932, issue

    “QUICKER’N A WINK” Quick as a wink is a great deal too slow. This proverbial epitome of speed is beaten a dozen times over by the newest trick in scientific high-speed photography, which can take 13 “frames” of motion pictures of a human eye during the fortieth of a second it spends in getting shut. […]

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  3. Humans

    From the June 7, 1930, issue

    COMET MAY CAUSE METEORIC DISPLAY If you watch the sky during the nights of early June, you may be treated to an unusual display of meteors, or “shooting stars.” For comet 1930d, as the astronomers call the new visitor to the heavens discovered by the Germans Schwassmann and Wachmann, is expected to cause a meteoric […]

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  4. 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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  5. 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 […]

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  6. 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.

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  7. 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 […]

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  8. 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.

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  9. 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.

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  10. 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.

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  11. 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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  12. 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. […]

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