Uncategorized
- Humans
ThinkQuest Winners
In the ThinkQuest competition, teams of students from around the world create educational Web sites. Take a look at this year’s winners, which feature imaginative and engaging efforts on such topics as avian flu, mathematics history, information inequality in the digital age, minerals and mining, artificial intelligence, and more. Go to: http://www.thinkquest.org/aug05may06/index.shtml
- Earth
Mercury Rising: Natural wildfires release pollutant
Fires in high-latitude forests and peaty soils of the Northern Hemisphere may loft hundreds of tons of mercury into the atmosphere each year.
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Pathogen Preference: Infected amoebas flourish in cooling towers
Cooling towers appear to be more effective than natural waters at fostering novel bacterial species that cause illnesses in people.
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19725
From literature I’ve reviewed, there can be significant differences between small-building cooling towers and large cooling towers—at a power plant, for instance. A large cooling tower is designed with significantly more water circulation, flushing, and chemical treatment that reduce the potential for pathogens. The researchers should be encouraged to not lump all “cooling towers” in […]
- Chemistry
Lacy molecular order
A lacy honeycomb arrangement of molecules on copper suggests the possibility of creating useful nanoscale patterns on surfaces by fine-tuning intermolecular forces.
- Animals
Underage Spiders: Males show unexpected interest in young mates
Male Australian redback spiders mate readily with females too young to have external openings to their reproductive tracts, a tactic that reduces the male's risk of getting cannibalized.
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19724
I wonder if the researchers in this article have made any observations of the prevalence of males mating with juvenile females when mature females are present in the environment. Carolyn CramoyLake Placid, N.Y. Maydianne Andrade of the University of Toronto at Scarborough says that no information on that is available yet. She and her team […]
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Sweet Finding: Researchers propose candidate sour sensor
A protein on the surfaces of select tongue cells may play a pivotal role in detecting sour taste.
- Math
Fields Medals: Mathematicians win awards for geometry, physics, and probability
Fields Medals have been awarded to four mathematicians, including Grigori Perelman, who proved a famous conjecture about the shapes of higher-dimensional spheres.
- Health & Medicine
Risky Legacy: African DNA linked to prostate cancer
The high rate of prostate cancer among African American men may result in large part from a newly identified stretch of DNA passed down from their African ancestors.
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19723
I won’t state that “dark matter” hasn’t been discovered. However I disagree that empirical evidence for it is demonstrated in this collision. Other phenomena that could explain the images include excitation of preexisting gases or imaging artifacts. Nowhere in the article does it state that the mass of “dark matter” was actually observed passing unimpeded […]
- Astronomy
Enlightened: Dark matter spotted after cosmic crash
In the aftermath of a cosmic crash between two galaxies, researchers say they've detected invisible dark matter for the first time.
