More Stories from the January 14, 2012 issue
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LifeCretaceous Thanksgiving
A fossilized feathered dinosaur dined on bird not long before its own demise.
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Life
DNA to flutter by
The complete genetic instruction book for making monarch butterflies contains information about how the insects manage their long migration to Mexico.
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Space
Christmas gamma-ray burst still puzzles
Nearly a year after receiving a spectacular celestial gift, astrophysicists are still asking: “What is it?”
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Health & Medicine
E. coli evade detection by going dormant
When stressed, bacteria can temporarily turn comatose and dodge germ-screening tests.
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Life
Mere fear shrinks bird families
Just hearing recordings of predators, in the absence of any real danger, caused sparrows to raise fewer babies.
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Humans
Tools of a kind
People in southern Arabia around 100,000 years ago made tools like those of East Africans.
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Health & Medicine
Gene therapy helps counter hemophilia B
Treatment enables cells to produce a key blood-clotting compound, allowing some patients to quit medication.
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Life
Walking may have had wet start
Based on the way that primitive lungfish use their fins to move along tank bottoms, researchers argue for an underwater start to four-legged locomotion.
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Life
The electric mole rat acid test
Naked mole rats don’t feel the burn of acid thanks to tweaks in a protein involved in sending pain messages to the brain.
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Humans
Uncommitted newbies can foil forceful few
Decisions more democratic when individuals with no preset preference join a group.
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Psychology
Face deficit holds object lesson
A brain-damaged man yields controversial clues to how people identify complex objects.
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Humans
Smells like a bear raid
Analysis of stock trading data suggests an effort to manipulate the market in 2007.
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Space
First Earth-sized planets netted
The Kepler space telescope gets one step closer to its mission of discovering habitable worlds by finding two orbs of terrestrial proportions orbiting a distant sunlike star.
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Ecosystems
Groundwater dropping globally
Nine-year record collected from orbit finds supply dropping mostly due to agriculture.
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Science Past from the issue of January 13, 1962
MOON RACE WILL INCREASE — The race for the moon will become more competitive in 1962 in prestige, military and scientific aspects. Foremost there is developing a national will or desire to explore the moon and put an American landing party on the natural satellite of the earth. This is an objective set forth by […]
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Science Future for January 14, 2012
February 15 “Matchmaking in the Digital Age” at the New York Academy of Sciences looks at the computer algorithms behind online social sites and what can be learned from them. See bit.ly/oVX2oy February 16 The “Hugs and Hisses” event at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science gives an up-close view of the world of […]
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SN Online
SCIENCE & THE PUBLIC BLOG A government panel wants Science and Nature to withhold data that could be used to make bird flu more deadly. See “Researchers, journals asked to censor data.” ENVIRONMENT Survival rates of young fish could suffer from ocean acidification levels expected this century. Read “Acid test points to coming fish troubles.” […]
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Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters by Gordon M. Shepherd
A neuroscientist explores how the brain creates the sensation of flavor and discusses the effects of taste perception on healthy eating. Columbia Univ., 2011, 267 p., $24.95
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Magical Mathematics: The Mathematical Ideas that Animate Great Magic Tricks by Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham
Learn the secrets behind card tricks, including step-by-step instructions for performing them, along with the mathematical ideas the tricks illustrate. Princeton Univ., 2011, 244 p., $29.95
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Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City by Andrew Ross
The prospects for sustainability look bleak for the city of Phoenix in this environmental analysis of the desert oasis. Oxford Univ., 2011, 304 p., $27.95
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Drive and Curiosity: What Fuels the Passion for Science by Istvan Hargittai
The stories of 15 leading scientists are examined for clues to what makes some scientists exceptional and what fuels discovery. Prometheus Books, 2011, 338 p., $26
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BOOK REVIEW: The Art of Medicine: Over 2,000 Years of Images and Imagination by Julie Anderson, Emm Barnes and Emma Shackleton
The images in this survey of medicine prove an eclectic mix of the curious, the grotesque and the breathtakingly beautiful. Covering a wide array of medically related topics — such as cholera, childbirth and charlatans — the book presents the most captivating pieces from pharmaceutical entrepreneur Sir Henry Wellcome’s vast collection. The equally engaging text […]
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BOOK REVIEW: How To Think Like A Neandertal by Thomas Wynn and Frederick Coolidge
A Neandertal raised in a human family would make a great fishing boat captain but a lousy police officer. He or she could call on extensive knowledge of local sea conditions and an ease in dealing with small crews, but an inability to read strangers’ motives and recognize their lies would doom a Neandertal patrolling […]
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Tech
Software Scientist
Games such as chess have long been mastered by thinking machines. But weightier intellectual feats, such as deducing the laws of nature, have remained the domain of living, breathing brainiacs — until now. Laptop: andersphoto/Shutterstock; Screen Image: VLADGRIN/Shutterstock YEAST LAWS REDONE After being fed data on yeast glucose metabolism, Eureqa reproduced the seven known equations […]
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Health & Medicine
Brainy Ballplayers
Superstar athletes are revered for their physical prowess, not for what goes on between their ears. And most postgame interviews do little to challenge the notion that athletes have more brawn than brains. Steve mc/bigstock MIND CONTROL The brains of expert golfers preparing a swing (left, two views) show different activation patterns in motor areas […]
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Chemistry
In a Squeeze
Bruce Banner isn’t the only scientist who could crush you with one mighty squeeze. These days, the Hulk’s superhuman strength is matched by researchers who squish all kinds of stuff in superscience experiments. Researchers expect to achieve record-breaking pressures at the National Ignition Facility (target chamber shown). Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory SIMPLE ELEMENT, MANY FACES […]
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Letters
Skaters slide Regarding the article “Skateboarders rock at physics” (SN: 12/3/11, p. 10), the skateboarders’ “intuitive” conclusion that the ball will roll faster down the blue ramp (which is longer but has two steeper sections compared with the shorter red ramp with a single shallower section) depends on the particular geometries chosen for the two […]
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Make pituitary hormone
Read the full article (PDF) | Vote on future topic | Search archives October 17, 1953 | Vol. 64 | No. 16 Make pituitary hormone Synthesis for the first time of a hormone from the pituitary, often called the body’s master gland and famous source of the anti-arthritis ACTH, is announced by Dr. Vincent du […]
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The Physics Book: From the Big Bang to Quantum Resurrection, 250 Milestones in the History of Physics (Sterling Milestones) by Clifford A. Pickover
Ideas and subjects ranging from Maxwell’s demon to the rings of Saturn are highlighted in short encyclopedia-style entries with attractive illustrations. Sterling, 2011, 528 p., $29.95