Uncategorized
- Life
Smell deals with deprivation differently
One odor-related brain region called the orbitofrontal cortex keeps the sense primed for resumed input during a cold.
- Humans
Good times led to grisly custom
Ancient Chileans developed artificial mummification after an increase in the numbers of living and dead people made naturally preserved bodies hard to ignore.
- Physics
Molecules get a big chill
A new cooling method takes big groups of atoms closer to long-sought temperatures for exploring the nature of matter.
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New research on Native American origins takes anthropologists down memory lane
In school we learn that science proceeds logically from one experiment to the next, leaving in its wake a complete and certain body of knowledge. But science isn’t like that. It twists and turns, careens and tumbles and gets stuck in deep, sticky mudholes. And sometimes, science backtracks. That’s happened in cosmology recently, as observations […]
- Tech
Camera hack can spot cleaned-up crimes
Exploiting a standard tool of art conservation can help police find painted-over bloodstains.
- Chemistry
Method puts wrinkles in neat little rows
MIT researchers have discovered how to create perfect patterns of microscopic wrinkles.
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Saving primates with a dog and scat
View the video Graduate student Joseph Orkin, left, follows canine field assistant Pinkerton on a hunt for primate poop. Sun Guo-Zheng Joseph Orkin has found an unusual way to study highly endangered — and highly elusive — primates in southwestern China. Orkin hikes into isolated mountaintop forests accompanied by a four-legged assistant who avidly sniffs out scat left by […]
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Letters
Higgs affects inertia, not gravity In the articles on the Higgs field in the July 28 issue, the Higgs boson was described as giving rise to the mass and therefore the inertia of particles, and the articles said the Higgs causes particles to “resist motion.” Newton’s first law states that inertia or mass is the […]
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SN Online
ON THE SCENE BLOG The man at the rover lab’s helm talks to Science News. See “A lifetime of curiosity: An interview with JPL director Charles Elachi.” Courtesy Helmut Tischlinger, Eichstätt Museum of the Jurassic LIFE An unusually well-preserved fossil suggests dino ancestors were fluffy. Read “All dinosaurs may have had feathers.” HUMANS DNA tracks […]
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Science Future for August 25, 2012
September 13 Take a swig of beer science at the Museum of Life + Science in Durham, N.C. Event will include samples of 10 local beers plus a chance to learn about beer chemistry and physics. See bit.ly/SFncbeer September 15 Visit the Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago for an inside look at the lab’s energy […]
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Science Past from the issue of August 25, 1962
RUBY LASER PIERCES A SAPPHIRE CRYSTAL — A pulsed ruby laser piercing a sapphire crystal is shown on this week’s front cover. The laser at the Radio Corporation of America Laboratories in Princeton, N.J., generates energy so intense that it can bore a sixteenth of an inch hole in the sapphire in a thousandth of […]
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Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain: How to Retrain Your Brain to Overcome Pessimism and Achieve a More Positive Outlook by Elaine Fox
An overview of recent research suggests ways to take advantage of the brain’s malleability to change patterns of thinking. Basic Books, 2012, 256 p., $26.99
