Uncategorized
- Earth
Inhaling salt raises blood pressure
People who work in environments where large amounts of salt particles hang in the air may literally breathe their way to high blood pressure.
- Health & Medicine
Tracking busy genes to get at cancer
By identifying which genes are overactive in certain breast tumors, researchers have discovered a genetic signature that could help doctors predict if and when a woman's cancer might spread to her lungs.
- Tech
Roughing up counterfeiters
A new anticounterfeiting scheme generates unique, reproducible identity codes that could be used to authenticate passports, credit cards, and other items on the basis of inherent, microscopic irregularities in the items' surfaces.
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- Health & Medicine
Potent Medicine
Drugs now used to treat erectile dysfunction might soon assume multiple roles in managing heart disease and other conditions, including some that affect women and infants.
- Animals
Myth of the Bad-Nose Birds
Even though a lot of people still believe birds have no sense of smell, certain species rely on their noses for important jobs, such as finding food and shelter, and maybe even a mate.
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19585
I wonder if any of the researchers had a pet bird. My Alexandrine parakeet can smell beer or ice cream from two rooms away—She screams for her share. Bruce DowRidge Manor, Fla.
- Math
Strange Orbits
Orbiting bodies can follow weird trajectories, from figure-eight loops to complex, interlocked paths.
- Humans
From the August 10, 1935, issue
A silencer for artificial lightning, a trigger for epilepsy, and light that keeps plants from growing.
- Archaeology
The Iceman Cometh
A Web site maintained by Italy’s South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology offers an illustrated look at scientific efforts to understand the life and death of Oetzi the Iceman, who perished in Europe’s Alps more than 5,000 years ago only to be discovered in mummified form by hikers in 1991. Explore Oetzi’s clothing, equipment, and tattoos, […]
- Paleontology
Just for Frills?
The more that paleontologists scrutinize some dinosaurs' plates, frills, and other anatomical oddities, the more they suspect that the rationale behind these features is simply the need to be recognizably different.
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19584
The plates on Stegosaurus and the fleshy, domed skulls on pachycephalosaurs could certainly have been for recognition, but not the kind of recognition cited in this article comparing it to teen fashion. Isn’t flashy recognition often a sign that says, “Don’t eat me because I am poisonous”? There may have been enough noxious secretions in […]
