50 Years Ago
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Science Past for December 6, 1958
Find cell “power plants”—Fragments of mitochondria, microscopic “islands” in the cell protoplasm surrounding the nucleus, are helping scientists find out how a cell gets its energy to carry on vital life processes. All energy comes from combustion of foodstuffs, but exactly how the living cell does absorb, store and release energy is unknown. Now, Dr. […]
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Science Past for November 22, 1958
Volunteers show vaccine can prevent colds — The common cold can be prevented, a British scientist reported to the sixth annual Symposium on Antibiotics meeting in Washington, D.C. Weekly injections of a vaccine prepared from the volunteer’s own nose and throat bacteria significantly reduced the number of colds, Dr. J. Morrison Ritchie, director of the […]
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Science Past for November 8, 1958
Temperate zones may be man’s limit for cold — Men living in the temperate zones had better not leave home for colder climes. The areas between the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic Circle and between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic Circle represent the limits as far as their cold endurance goes, a […]
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From Science News Letter, October 25, 1958
PIONEER LACKED EXTRA PUSH —Pioneer, man’s first space probe, came within a fraction of the 35,250-foot-per-second velocity needed to put it into an orbit around the moon. It reached a maximum velocity of 34,400 feet per second. Even though the vehicle burned up in the earth’s atmosphere, its successful flight to a distance of 79,316 […]
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From Science News Letter, October 11, 1958
Fishy Conversations — Spiny lobsters are like men, their voices become deeper as they grow older. This is one of the preliminary findings of Dr. James M. Moulton of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me., who spent this summer at the Bermuda Biological Station eavesdropping on the conversations of undersea life. In countless other marine biological stations […]
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From Science News Letter, September 27, 1958
PARKINSON’S DISEASE NO LONGER INCURABLE — Parkinsonism, or shaking palsy, is no longer a hopeless, progressive, incurable disease. A five-year follow-up study of 700 brain operations for Parkinsonism revealed that 80% of the properly selected cases found relief from the tremor, rigidity, deformity and incapacitation of parkinsonism after basal ganglia surgery. Furthermore, these symptoms can […]
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From Science News Letter, September 13, 1958
RNA INFLUENCES CELL DIFFERENTIATION — Ribonucleic acid has been pinpointed as having an essential role in cell differentiation, the process by which the early embryo’s look-alike cells become nerve, bone, skin and other organs. Working with extremely small quantities of cellular material, 20 to 50 cells, taken from embryonic newt and salamander tissue, Dr. M. C. Niu […]
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From Science News Letter, August 30, 1958
NO “SAFE” RADIATION DOSE — There is no period of safety after exposure to harmful radiation, a geneticist reports. Radiation has been found to affect the primitive germ cell from which the sperm develops. Chromosome abnormalities may be transmitted to offspring in dangerous numbers for a long time after irradiation of the male. This also […]
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From Science News Letter, August 16, 1958
From the "Notebook" page of the Aug. 30, 2008, Science News.
- Archaeology
From Science News Letter, August 2, 1958
PORCUPINES GNAWED ON STONE AGE MAN’S TOOLS — Razor sharp edges on some of the bone chisels of Middle Stone Age man in Africa were found to have been put there by the needle-sharp front teeth of porcupines, Dr. Raymond A. Dart of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, reports. But the fact […]
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From Science News Letter, July 19, 1958
RUSSIANS TEST ACCELERATOR — Russian scientists reported the first results of experiments with their atom-smasher, the world’s largest, to the 1958 Annual International Conference on High Energy Physics in Geneva, Switzerland. Their studies showed the hard core of a proton, a fundamental particle of the atomic nucleus and a building block for all matter, shrinks […]
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From Science News Letter, July 5, 1958
DEVICE PAGES DOCTORS — A pocket radio that whistles to let you know somebody is trying to reach you by telephone is part of a page-you-anywhere telephone system undergoing tests in the Allentown-Bethlehem, Pa., area. Doctors, lawyers and other persons who must maintain immediate and economical contact with their offices can be signaled anywhere in […]
