Uncategorized
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Trash to Treasure: Junk DNA influences eggs, early embryos
A type of DNA once thought to be little more than genetic clutter may play a role in gene expression in mammalian eggs and newly formed embryos.
- Math
A Catalog of Random Bits
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
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Verbal sighting in brains of the blind
Brain areas typically responsible for visual processing instead contribute to verbal skills in blind people.
- Planetary Science
Martian water everywhere
Combining data taken from two craft orbiting Mars with images and spectra collected by one of the Mars rovers, a scientist has found evidence that a body of water greater in area than all the Great Lakes combined once covered the Red Planet.
- Physics
To freeze this liquid, add heat
A wrong-headed mixture of liquid starch, water, and a solvent freezes when heated.
- Earth
Extra rainfall may stem warming in Midwest
Increased precipitation in parts of the Midwest may reduce the temperature increases expected to occur in the next few decades as a result of global warming.
- Health & Medicine
Drug-resistant staph causes more pneumonia
A recently discovered variant of Staphylococcus aureus that is resistant to some antibiotics became a major cause of severe pneumonia among people who caught the flu last winter.
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New bacteria linked to vaginal infections
Several newly described bacteria appear to share much of the responsibility for causing a common infection in women.
- Health & Medicine
Kids’ vaccine guards adults too, for now
Serious infections caused by pneumococcus have decreased in both children and adults since the introduction of a childhood vaccine against seven strains of the bacterium, but other pneumococcus strains are now becoming more prevalent among adults with HIV.
- Health & Medicine
Human antibody halts SARS in hamsters
Human-derived antibodies can not only prevent infections when given in advance of SARS exposure but also mitigate the symptoms of an infection already in progress.
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My response as an educator to much of the outrageous science depicted in so many of the recent blockbuster hits is very different from that of many of the scientists quoted in your article. The films provide a wonderful source of science projects that students actually relish. The more outrageous the science, the greater they […]
- Humans
What’s Wrong with This Picture?
Scientists and educators increasingly are using analyses of bad science in movies, as well as the good, to inform the public about scientific facts and principles.
