Uncategorized
- Math
Benjamin Franklin Plays Sudoku
Founding father entertained himself devising beautiful mathematical puzzles.
- Astronomy
Four’s a crowd
Astronomers have found a quartet of stars packed into a region smaller than Jupiter's orbit around the sun.
- Astronomy
Gravity at play: A double lens
Astronomers have discovered an extraordinarily rare double cosmic mirage.
- Astronomy
Case of the misshapen disk
A deformed disk around a young star may have gotten its swept-back appearance as the result of a collision with a dense gas cloud.
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19919
We must dissociate the attacks themselves from the intense media barrage that followed. Under the guise of providing information, the press seemed intent on inflaming our most negative feelings of fear, hatred, and grief. While the attacks were no doubt emotionally distressing, the psychological trauma was amplified a thousandfold by the nonstop and repetitive coverage. […]
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9/11 attacks stoked U.S. heart ailments
People who experienced serious stress reactions shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks also displayed markedly elevated rates of new heart and blood vessel ailments over the next 3 years.
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Antidepressants get overly positive spin
Studies finding beneficial effects of antidepressant drugs for depressed patients get published far more often than do studies that uncover no antidepressant benefits.
- Paleontology
Life explodes twice
The Ediacaran fauna were as varied as all animals in existence today and, more impressively, as in the Cambrian, report paleontologists.
- Animals
Fenced-off trees drop their friends
Protecting acacia trees from large, tree-munching animals sets off a chain of events that ends up ruining the trees' partnership with their bodyguard ants.
- Materials Science
Life in Print
Tissues printed with an ink-jet could provide patches for damaged organs, new cell-based materials for drug testing, new ways to probe cellular communication, living sensors, or even fuel cell–type batteries.
- Physics
Supercool, and Strange
Scientists tracking H2O's highs and lows are finding new clues as to how and why the familiar substance is so odd. Recent research, for example, suggests that water may exist in two distinct liquid phases at ultralow temperatures.
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19918
This article keeps the reader on track with accurate, entertaining metaphors. It ends with a riveting observation from the White Mountains of New Hampshire: The tree line occurs where windchill temperatures reach 220 kelvins, the temperature at which supercooled water “undergoes a phase transition.” Windchill temperatures are not physical temperatures—neither the trees nor the air […]
