5,523 results
5,523 results for: Forests
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Letters
Hairy Ardi issue In the report on Ardi (“Evolution’s bad girl,” SN: 01/16/10, p. 22), the artist’s illustrations show her in fur. The fact that her purported descendants are relatively hairless has been popularized by Desmond Morris (The Naked Ape, 1967) and Elaine Morgan (The Descent of Woman, 1972). What is the paleoanthropologists’ evidence that […]
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Science Future for January 29, 2011
February 11 – 13 Explore geology at the 60th Annual Agate and Mineral Show at Portland, Oregon’s science museum. See www.omsi.edu February 13 Boston’s Museum of Science officially reopens its planetarium with a show about exoplanets. Go to www.mos.org February 14 Savor a “miracle fruit” berry that deceives taste buds, in a butterfly rain forest […]
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Letters
Prescient sci-fi It took the Science News editor in chief to recognize the most prescient science “fiction” movie of all time, Forbidden Planet (“Science brings real life to the technologies of fiction,” SN: 7/2/11, p. 2). Beyond civilization without instrumentalities, the film also brought us lasers before there were masers, Robby [the Robot] analyzing molecular […]
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SN Online
DELETED SCENES BLOG An orbiting camera catches dust devils whirling at high speeds on the Red Planet. Read “HiRISE clocks hurricane-speed winds on Mars.” ATOM & COSMOS Astronomers get a new odometer to measure faraway objects. See “Longer cosmic ruler based on black holes.” ENVIRONMENT A warming climate could be making elk more destructive to […]
- Climate
Matt Crenson, Reconstructions
In ancient Southwest droughts, a warning of dry times to come.
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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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Thinking the Hurt Away: Expectations hitch ride on pain’s brain pathway
Positive thinking exerts a calming effect on pain-related brain areas, yielding a substantial reduction in the actual perception of pain, a brain-scan investigation suggests.
- Anthropology
Wild gorillas take time for tool use
Gorillas that balance on walking sticks and trudge across makeshift bridges have provided the first evidence of tool use among these creatures in the wild.
- Earth
Drought’s heat killed Southwest’s piñon forests
The heat accompanying a drought and a plague of bark beetles seem to explain the deaths of swathes of piñon pine trees across the Southwest in 2002 and 2003.
- Earth
Breaking Waves: Mangroves shielded parts of coast from tsunami
Along a strip of India's southeastern coastline, trees protected certain villages from last December's tsunami, while waves wiped out neighboring settlements that weren't sheltered by vegetation.
- Animals
Yikes! The Moon! Bat lunar phobia may come from slim pickings
A study of creatures that fly around at night suggests that scarce food may account for why some bats avoid hunting under a full moon.
- Earth
Roots of Climate: Plants’ water transport cools Amazon basin
Field tests in the Amazon have for the first time measured daily and seasonal movements of soil moisture through the deep roots of trees.
