Uncategorized
- Computing
A loosely woven Web
The World Wide Web is less like a network of heavily interconnected superhighways and more like a jungle of one-way streets often leading to dead ends.
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19190
In regard to the ability of people unable to speak a language to detect lying, this may be a result not of their inability to speak or understand any language but merely their inability to speak or understand the language the speakers were using. Some years ago, while visiting Japan, I saw a television show […]
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Emotional gain after verbal loss
Brain-damaged people who have lost much of their ability to understand spoken sentences are better than healthy folks at picking up emotions that others are trying to conceal.
- Health & Medicine
Gene may keep breast cancer at bay
Scientists have identified a gene that seems to protect against some common breast cancers.
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Extended test for bipolar drugs
A long-term study finds some advantages for patients with manic-depressive illness taking an anticonvulsant drug, although placebos also have positive effects on this ailment.
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19156
This article asserts that the earliest photographic image was taken in 1826. In fact, the earliest photographic image may date to much earlier. Using silver nitrate on linen (1992) and later silver sulfate (1994), Nicholas P.L. Allen was able to reproduce, in large part, the unique visual and chemical properties of the Shroud of Turin. […]
- Chemistry
Photography at a Crossroads
Researchers are racing to understand the chemical processes used during the past 2 centuries to make photographs before digital-imaging techniques take over completely.
- Anthropology
Care-Worn Fossils
A nearly toothless fossil jaw found in France has reignited scientific debate over whether the skeletal remains of physically disabled individuals show that our Stone Age ancestors provided life-saving care to the ill and infirm.
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Spider real estate wars: Wake up early
Big spiders in a colony get prime real estate day after day by spinning webs early.
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Dolphins bray when chasing down a fish
The first high-resolution analysis of which dolphin is making which sound suggests that hunters blurt out a low-frequency, donkeylike sound that may startle prey into freezing for an instant or attract other dolphins.
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Invader ants win by losing diversity
The Argentine ants that are trouncing U.S. species derive much of their takeover power, oddly enough, from losing genetic diversity.
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19155
I think it’s more than coincidental that the sound repertoire of babbling babies, compared with the speech sounds in a diversity of languages across the world, lends credence to the idea that there was a mother tongue that goes back to prehistoric times. Readers of the Bible will recall that it was after the fall […]
