390 results
- Earth
Tides in Earth’s crust trigger small, deep quakes
Study of one portion of the San Andreas fault finds that just a little added stress from crustal tides makes a quake more likely.
- Humans
Cigarettes might be infectious
Science & Society blog: The tobacco in cigarettes hosts a bacterial bonanza — literally hundreds of different germs, including those responsible for many human illnesses, a new study finds.
- Health & Medicine
Germs in tobacco are potential source of respiratory infections blamed on smoking
Tests find hundreds of bacterial species in major cigarette brands.
- Life
Climate not really what doomed large North American mammals
Prevalence of a dung fungus over time suggests megafauna extinctions at end of last ice age started before vegetation changed.
- Health & Medicine
Scientists offer compelling images of Gulf War illness
BLOG: Researchers have just rolled out a host of brain images — various types of magnetic resonance scans and brain-wave measurements — that they say graphically and unambiguously depict Gulf War Syndrome.
- Life
Not so different after all
Plague bacteria may be deadlier than its harmless cousin because of a few small genetic changes.
- Humans
Butting out together
Cigarette smokers who know one another tend to kick the habit all at once, highlighting the importance of social forces in smoking-cessation treatment.
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19839
Rather than concluding that the object that hit Canada 12,900 years ago was a comet, I wonder whether there might not be an alternate reason that geologists haven’t discovered a large hole. If a meteor hit a kilometer-thick glacier, would it have left a crater in the rock underneath the ice? Peter ShorWellesley, Mass. Scientists […]
- Archaeology
La Brea del Sur
Excavations at tar pits in Venezuela suggest that the fossils found there may rival those of the famed Rancho La Brea tar pits in Southern California.
- Humans
Letters from the August 18, 2007, issue of Science News
Exhaustive analysis I would debate the “1,000 watts or more” value attributed to typical adults during strenuous exercise (“Powering the Revolution: Tiny gadgets pick up energy for free,” SN: 6/2/07, p. 344). Hiking up steep slopes, I rarely exceed 250 W myself, and typical hikers are going much slower. The 1,000-watt figure can only apply […]
- Ecosystems
Brave Old World
If one group of conservation biologists has its way, lions, cheetahs, elephants, and other animals that went extinct in the western United States up to 13,000 years ago might be coming home.
- Math
Problems to Sharpen the Young
Medieval brainteasers have kept students and other people puzzled and entertained for centuries.
