Uncategorized
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Itsy bitsy genome
Researchers have sequenced the smallest genome yet discovered, a string of DNA belonging to a species of bacterium that lives inside sap-eating insects' guts.
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19749
This article made me wonder how long a gas planet is expected to survive when one of its faces is more than 1,000°C. The conventional model of our solar system assumes that gas planets can form and survive only in a cold region of space. This implies that Upsilon Andromedae b moved to its present […]
- Astronomy
Feeling the heat of an extrasolar planet
Astronomers have measured the temperature variation between the lit and unlit sides of a planet outside the solar system.
- Planetary Science
Satanic Winds
Dust devils send prodigious amounts of dust into Earth's atmosphere, and on Mars the electric fields generated by the dusty vortices may actually stimulate changes in atmospheric chemistry that sterilize the soil.
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19748
I am amazed that this article concluded that “Scientists have a long way to go to explain why” prey animals play dead. As a veterinarian, I have learned that there are separate centers in the brain dealing with predatory behavior and with hunger. The effect seems to be that predatory behavior, by itself, is satisfying, […]
- Animals
Why Play Dead?
Common wisdom dictates that playing dead discourages predators, but researchers are now thinking harder about how, or whether, that strategy really works.
- Humans
Letters from the October 28, 2006, issue of Science News
Slow down a minute “Braking news: Disks slow down stars” (SN: 8/12/06, p. 109) says that a magnetic linkage between spinning stars and the charged particles in the dusty disks that surround them slowed the spin of the stars, but says nothing about its effect on the disk. The law of conservation of angular momentum […]
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- Humans
From the October 17, 1936, issue
A million volts to fight cancer, relief from migraines, and differing sensitivity to sound.
- Humans
Insect Close-Ups
Psychology professor David Yager of the University of Maryland has focused his research on the evolution of hearing. In the course of this work, he has produced extraordinary, close-up portraits of a variety of insects. His image of a Cuban cockroach recently won second place for photography in the National Science Foundation’s annual Science and […]
- Health & Medicine
Prep Work: Bird-flu vaccine might work better with primer
Giving people a vaccine against an existing form of avian influenza might help them respond better when given a shot for a future strain of the virus during a pandemic.
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19747
This article states, “Several billion years from now, scientists predict, the galaxy and the Milky Way will collide. . . .” How can galactic collisions occur in an expanding universe, where galaxies should be moving away from each other? James HendryFlorissant, Mo. On the large scale, objects are indeed receding from each other. But locally, […]
