All Stories by Science News
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19324
This short piece didn’t say how self-esteem was assessed. Overdeveloped egotism is often a compensatory phenomenon in individuals with low self-esteem and can falsely present as high self-esteem. Self-reported self-regard taken at face value can lead to wrong conclusions about the effects of different levels of self-esteem on behavior, perception, relationships, and other aspects of […]
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19035
I find the ideas promulgated in this article deeply disturbing. The idea of pulling out a couple of chemicals and standardizing them is a turning away from the holism that herbal remedies represent. This is the very essence of the complaint against conventional pharmaceuticals and why people are turning to herbals. That there is a […]
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19243
The discovery that humans share 99.4 percent of their genetic sequences with chimps does not make chimps like us in any meaningful sense or lower “humanity’s pedestal” in the slightest degree. In some 5 million years on Earth the sum total of chimps’ cultural achievements has been exactly 0. In only 200,000 years, modern humans […]
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19323
For those of us who know how to draw and understand the varieties of linear perspective, David Hockney’s proposal that the old masters used optical aids rings true. One of his examples will suffice: The uncanny accuracy of difficult-to-depict patterns in folding cloth in works of the early 1400s is an indication that optical aids […]
- Humans
From the May 27, 1933, issue
CRYSTAL WONDERLAND You can see all these things through a microscope, as scientists and laymen have been seeing them for many years. But the way into this Lilliputia of the waters is being made even easier for you through the amazing artistry in glass of a worker at the American Museum of Natural History in […]
- Humans
Ring World
Ever wonder what it might be like to live on a doughnut-shaped world? NASA has created a Web page that gives you a sense of what life would be like in a ringlike structure out in space, where there is no gravity except the centrifugal force generated by the structure’s spin. Simulation requires a Java-enabled […]
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From the May 20, 1933, issue
LARGEST X-RAY TUBE BEGINS TO BATTLE AGAINST CANCER The mightiest weapon yet to enter the war against cancer was put in operation at the Mercy Hospital Institute of Radiation Therapy of Chicago. It is a new, 800,000-volt X-ray tube that, operating on a current of 1/100 of an ampere, is estimated to emit radiation equal […]
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Amphibian Atlas
Looking for a Montana tailed frog outside Montana or wondering in which state you might find a desert slender salamander? The U.S. Geological Survey has a Web site that identifies the places where different types of amphibians dwell across the United States. Click on any one of the 280 or so species of amphibians currently […]
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19322
Your article neglects the most difficult problem associated with sending a probe to the vicinity of Earth’s core: sending the information back. Even a few feet of earth will stop conventional radio waves. Extra-low-frequency transmissions would do the job, but a transmission could take years. Augusto Soux San Diego, Calif. David J. Stevenson of the […]
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19242
There is another interpretation of the mitochondrial DNA data presented in this article. The data make it clear that the more advanced Cro-Magnon males only mated with Cro-Magnon females; however, there is no evidence that the Cro-Magnon females didn’t mate with the more muscular Neandertal males. Jeff Nicoll and Joan Cartier Washington, D.C. Much mixing […]
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19321
Your article was very interesting. While hiking in terrains ranging from midwestern prairies to alpine environments, I’ve seen different forms of buckling due to freezing forces. Though evaporation was given a nod in the article, it too can be a significant force to form patterned ground. In March of 2002, I walked out to the […]
- Humans
From the May 13, 1933, issue
RISING SILENTLY TO PROTECT NATIONS TIME Almost as silently as you view the new domed building in the cover picture, this all-steel structure is rising at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington. There is no hammering of rivets to fray the nerves of humans and upset the accuracy of the delicate Naval Observatory clocks that […]
