Science News

All Stories by Science News

  1. Humans

    From the November 19, 1932, issue

    NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY IS AWARDED DR. LANGMUIR The award of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Dr. Irving Langmuir, the General Electric Research Laboratory chemist, adds laurels to a system of investigation of nature’s secrets as it recognizes a great scientist. Langmuir has never been a mere inventor or applier of knowledge to […]

  2. Brain Museum

    Interested in comparing the brains of mammals? The Brain Museum Web site offers images and information from one of the world’s largest collection of well-preserved, sectioned, and stained mammal brains. Viewers can see photos of brains of more than 100 mammal species (including humans). The site also presents material on a variety of topics of […]

  3. 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 […]

  4. 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. […]

  5. 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.

  6. 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 […]

  7. 19154

    The initial conclusions of the study of Romanian children raised in orphanages and adopted in Britain would seem to this adoptive parent to be prematurely optimistic. A study based on subjects aged only up to 6 years can hardly conclude that severe deprivation “doesn’t inevitably undermine social functioning.” On the basis of the experience of […]

  8. 19153

    Your article describes the economic and environmental costs of semiconductor chips. Interestingly, the impacts on the environment are very similar for the manufacture of solar cells. Many environmentalists place such unrealistic expectations on solar cell energy that they overlook certain facts. First, solar cells yield at most 30 percent efficiency. Second, solar cells do not […]

  9. 19152

    It’s not surprising that training may enhance intellect in the elderly. What would be remarkable would be for the elderly to be completely incapable of learning. The real question is whether cognitive training works against whatever causes cognitive decline in the elderly or whether it merely boosts base-level ability. The former would be indicated only […]

  10. Humans

    From the May 24, 1930, issue

    GRASSHOPPERS THREATEN UNITED STATES Grasshoppers threaten to wreak heavy damage to grain and forage crops in Montana and the Dakotas this year. There were many hoppers in these states, and in parts of Texas, last year, and the eggs they laid are now hatching in large numbers. If climatic and other conditions favor the growth […]

  11. Explore Mars

    NASA has made more than 100,000 images of Mars available as a Web-based photo album. The archive of pictures, taken by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor, covers the period from September 1997 to the present. Go to: http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/index.html

  12. Humans

    From the November 12, 1932, issue

    FIRST WELDED PENSTOCK BUILT IN CALIFORNIA Welding, an abundant source of beautiful photographs, furnishes another picture for the front cover of the Science News Letter this week; but beauty was not sufficient reason for its prominence in the cover position. The picture was taken within a welded pipe, one-fourth-mile long, tilted up a mountainside at […]