More Stories from the December 20, 2008 issue
- Life
Schools make fish smarter
A study of consensus decision making shows that sticklebacks make wider choices in groups of three or more.
- Animals
Forensics’ next tool: Hair-collecting caterpillars
First human DNA extraction from hair bits in moth larval case.
- Health & Medicine
Ginkgo biloba fails drug test
The herbal supplement Ginkgo biloba fails to prevent Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia, a large trial finds.
- Health & Medicine
Sleep makes room for memories
Sleep erases old memories to make way for new learning
- Physics
Superconductivity does the twist
Electron fluctuations could explain why exotic material conducts without resistance.
- Space
Water-ice deposits found beneath Martian hills
Using radar from an orbiting spacecraft to penetrate the hidden recesses of Mars, planetary prospectors have uncovered vast reserves of water-ice buried beneath rocky debris.
- Physics
Standard model gets right answer for proton, neutron masses
Correct calculation strengthens theory of quark-gluon interactions in nuclear particles.
- Health & Medicine
Many drug trials never see publication
Results of most drug trials are unreported, inaccessible to clinicians and patients, a new study confirms.
- Humans
Baby boys may show spatial supremacy
Two new studies suggest that, at 3 to 5 months of age, boys already outperform girls on mental rotation tasks.
- Earth
Antidepressants make for sad fish
Fish may suffer substantially from even brief encounters with antidepressants, which wastewater releases into river water.
- Health & Medicine
Honeybee CSI: Why dead bodies can’t be found
Virus could explain one symptom of colony collapse.
- Ecosystems
Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet by Oliver Morton
HarperCollins, 2008, 460 p., $28.95.
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- Earth
The Hunt for Habitable Planets
Here and now, a new suite of small telescopes are poised to look for Earthlike planets beyond the solar system.
- Physics
Physicists Hot for Ultracold
Physicists have recently coaxed molecules into ultracold states in which motion is nearly gone.
- Health & Medicine
Imagination Medicine
Brain imaging reveals the substance of placebos. Expectation alone triggers the same neural circuits and chemicals as real drugs.
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Letters
NASA’s source In “Cooling climate ‘consensus’ of 1970s never was” (SN: 10/25/08, p. 5), Science News includes a graph, attributed to NASA, that shows temperature deviations from the year 1880. The data clearly indicate a distinct warming trend throughout the period. Why is it that over the past two years I have very painstakingly researched […]
- Astronomy
Stargazing Basics: Getting Started in Recreational Astronomy by Paul E. Kinzer
Cambridge Univ., 2008, 147 p., $19.99.
