Uncategorized
- Plants
Nectar: The First Soft Drink
Plants have long competed with one another to lure animals in for a sip of their sweet formulations.
- Health & Medicine
Predicting Parkinson’s
Scientists are searching for ways to detect the earliest signs in the brain of Parkinson's disease.
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- Humans
From the May 2, 1936, issue
Atomic bullets, exploding cornstarch, and an unstable solar system.
- Tech
Aircraft Photos
The Dryden Flight Research Center is NASA’s center for aeronautical flight research and atmospheric flight operations. The Center’s Web site has an extensive photo collection, which features images of many of the research and experimental aircraft flown at the test facility, from the 1940s to today. Go to: http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/index.html
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Blood Sucker: Like the adult heart, the developing heart takes advantage of suction
The embryonic heart works more like the adult heart than scientists had long assumed.
- Health & Medicine
Defending against a Deadly Foe: Vaccine forestalls fearsome virus
A single injection of an experimental vaccine prevents infection by the lethal Marburg virus in monkeys.
- Astronomy
Big Breakup: That’s the way the comet crumbles
Scores of telescopes are watching the continuing breakup of a comet as it nears the sun.
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Boyish Brains: Plastic chemical alters behavior of female mice
Exposure to the main ingredient of polycarbonate plastics can alter brain formation in female mouse fetuses and make the lab animals, later in life, display a typically male behavior pattern.
- Animals
No Early Birds: Migrators can’t catch advancing caterpillars
Pied flycatcher numbers are dwindling in places where climate change has knocked the birds' migration out of sync with the food-supply peak on their breeding grounds.
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I’ve always found difficult the argument that Homo erectus couldn’t speak because of the size of its spinal cord. Consider that parrots manage to reproduce a wide range of human sounds. David PetcheyMill Valley, Calif.
- Anthropology
Evolutionary Back Story: Thoroughly modern spine supported human ancestor
Bones from a spinal column discovered at a nearly 1.8-million-year-old site support the controversial possibility that ancient human ancestors spoke to one another.
