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Glacial warming’s pollutant threat
Some Arctic wildlife are being exposed to high amounts of toxic wastes as glacial melting releases pollutants that had been buried in ice for decades.
By Janet Raloff -
19115
This article comments that factors other than drought, such as disease, may have been at work in accounting for the disappearance of some Anasazi groups. If it is found that disease was a major factor, it would be unprecedented. As far as has been determined, the Anasazi didn’t experience exotic, culture-busting pathogens until Columbus made […]
By Science News - Archaeology
Could the Anasazi have stayed?
New computer simulations of the changing environmental conditions around one of the Anasazi cultural centers in the first part of the last millennium suggest that drought wasn't the only factor behind a sudden collapse of the civilization.
By Sid Perkins - Earth
Chinese records show typhoon cycles
Historical records compiled by local governments along China's southeastern coast during the past 1,000 years suggest that there's a 50-year cycle in the annual number of typhoons that strike the area.
By Sid Perkins - Earth
Cave formations yield seismic clues
Analyses of toppled stalagmites and other fallen rock formations in two Israeli caves may provide hints about the rate of ancient earthquakes in the area.
By Sid Perkins - Animals
Many fish run on empty
Many fish eat all the time, while some others spend their days going from brief feast to lengthy famine.
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Protein flags colon, prostate cancers
A compound first identified as a possible culprit in Huntington's disease may be an indicator of cancers of the prostate gland and colon.
By Nathan Seppa - Animals
Singing frog in China evokes whales, primates
A frog in China warbles and flutes with such versatility that its high-pitched calls sound like those of birds or whales.
By Susan Milius - Astronomy
Getting a Clear View
Outfitted with a mirror that flexes several hundred times a second to compensate for the blurring induced by Earth’s atmosphere, one of the world’s sharpest telescopes just got a whole lot sharper.
By Ron Cowen -
19114
In this article, you state, “The first Fermat number is 22+1, or 5,” and later, “the first four Fermat numbers are prime, but [among] the rest, up to and now including the 24th, none are prime.” Almost all number theorists consider the first Fermat prime to be F0 = 220 + 1 = 3, so […]
By Science News - Math
Great Computations
From sifting through radio telescope signals for signs of extraterrestrial life to searching for record-breaking prime numbers, home and office computers contribute via the Internet to a variety of research efforts.
- Astronomy
Tidal tails tell tales of newborn galaxies
Some streams of gas and dust ripped out of large galaxies appear to form their own galaxies and may provide astronomers with a close-up view of galaxy formation.
By Ron Cowen