More Stories from the July 2, 2011 issue
- Life
Mellow corals beat the heat
Species that overreact to distress signals from algae are more likely to succumb to warming.
- Life
Fish ignore alarming noises in acidifying seawater
Something about changing ocean chemistry could make young clownfish behave oddly around normally alarming sounds.
- Life
Go deep, small worm
A discovery in a South African mine suggests life can thrive far below the surface.
- Humans
Ancestral gals roamed, guys stayed home
Females in two ancient hominid species may have left their home groups to find mates.
- Health & Medicine
A year adds up to big changes in brain
Third grade brings big shifts in how kids use their heads to solve math problems.
- Tech
Information flow can reveal dirty deeds
An analysis of Enron e-mails reveals that corrupt networks have a distinctive shape.
- Space
Black hole jets in HD
Images of unprecedented resolution offer insight into how black holes swallow up matter.
- Humans
Site hints at Asian roots for human genus
An early Homo species inhabited the Caucasus region 1.85 million years ago, casting doubt on its proposed African origin.
- Health & Medicine
Drug prevents some breast cancers
A hormone-blocking compound can waylay some malignancies in healthy women who are deemed at risk.
- Life
Weeds increasingly immune to herbicides
Agricultural scientists warn that crop yields could drop as a result of emerging resistance.
- Space
Superdupernovas
A new class of stellar explosion is very bright — and somewhat hard to explain.
- Tech
Social Networks
Power networks in Congress, Twitter’s crystal ball and iPhone contagion in news from an MIT workshop on information in social media.
- Chemistry
Water-air interface barely there
The transition between gas and liquid is an extremely insubstantial affair.
- Life
Diving spiders make their own gills
Eurasian diving bell spiders, the only truly aquatic arachnids, survive underwater with the help of “physical gills,” scientists say.
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Science Future for July 2, 2011
July 7Be mesmerized by the color red and how it is made for pigments and paints, at San Francisco’s Exploratorium. Ages 18 and up. See www.exploratorium.edu/afterdark July 18In Washington, D.C., a Smithsonian science historian describes ancient apothecaries and their brews. See www.residentassociates.org
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Science Past from the issue of July 1, 1961
WINTERGREEN VS. ALMOND IN ODOR PENETRATION TEST — Different chemicals produce different odors because vibrations within the molecules are different. This is the theory of Dr. R.H. Wright of the British Columbia Research Council in Vancouver, Canada. He compared nitrobenzene, which has an almond smell, and methyl salicylate, which smells like wintergreen. Both these substances […]
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From the Archive: Carp eat other fish out
History repeats with another round of carp invasion.
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The Dance of Air and Sea: How Oceans, Weather, and Life Link Together by Arnold H. Taylor
An oceanographer explores the connectedness of the seas, atmosphere and weather, with implications for climate change. Oxford Univ. Press, 2011, 288 p., $29.95.
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BOOK REVIEW: Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us by Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman
Review by Devin Powell.
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Evolution’s Wedges
Finding the genes that drive one species into two.
- Earth
Death of a Continent, Birth of an Ocean
Africa’s Afar region gives glimpses of geology in action.
- Health & Medicine
Mind-Controlled
Linking brain and computer may soon lead to practical prosthetics for daily life.
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Letters
Your cosmic questions Regarding the “The vital statistics” in “Cosmic questions, answers pending” (SN: 4/23/11, p. 20), I was puzzled by two values: 13.75 billion years (time since the Big Bang) and 90 billion light-years (diameter of the universe). If light has been streaming away for 13.75 billion years, then shouldn’t the diameter of the […]
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Finding Mars by Ned Rozell
This travel yarn is set in the rugged regions of Earth, following permafrost scientist Kenji Yoshikawa as he traverses the frozen Arctic. Univ. of Alaska Press, 2011, 188 p., $22.95.
