Uncategorized
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19569
A lot of people ask how someone like Richard Feynman, who played the bongo drums, loved practical jokes, and was an amateur safecracker and a bon vivant, could also win a Nobel Prize in Physics. Actually, all of Feynman’s disparate characteristics are entirely in keeping with each other. In psychiatrist Carl Jung’s terms, Feynman was […]
- Math
Name Voyager
A striking form of data visualization enhances the search for a suitable name for a baby.
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Science News writers win physics and astronomy awards
Nobody ever said that writing about physics is easy. Keeping readers comfortable while piloting them through rapids of equations and torrents of abstract complexities can test the most experienced journalist. Members of the Science News staff face that challenge every week—and the success of our writers has been highlighted this year by two organizations of […]
- Humans
From the July 6, 1935, issue
A phantom ship on Crater Lake, a possible dietary cure for cancer, and an island universe in a cloud of dust.
- Health & Medicine
Anatomia
These Web pages feature more than 4,500 historic illustrations of human anatomy, taken from 95 rare books, ranging in date from 1522 to 1867. The books come from the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. See, for example, a drawing of the human heart and lungs, taken from René Descartes’ book De homine, […]
- Humans
A New Publisher
This week, we are pleased to welcome Elizabeth Marincola as the new president of Science Service and publisher of Science News. She succeeds Donald R. Harless, who retired after 34 years at Science Service, including 7 years as president and publisher of Science News. Elizabeth Marincola Marincola comes to us from the American Society for […]
- Earth
Growth Slumps: Melting permafrost shapes Alaskan lakes
A new model suggests that some fast-growing, egg-shaped lakes in Alaska expand when their permafrost banks melt and slump in tiny landslides.
- Chemistry
Striking Oil: High-pressure processing minimizes trans fats
Improvements in the techniques used to hydrogenate vegetable oils could soon fill store shelves with food products containing smaller percentages of unhealthful trans fats.
- Health & Medicine
Heartening Responses: Depression drugs may aid survival after heart attack
Depressed patients recovering from heart attacks receive big heart-health benefits by taking prescribed doses of the antidepressant drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
- Plants
Honey, We Shrank the Snow Lotus: Picking big plants reduces species’ height
Years of harvesting the larger plants of a Himalayan wildflower used in traditional medicines may be driving the evolution of a stubbier plant form.
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19568
Your article suggests that the change is an evolutionary process. However, this and the other examples given are all more selective breeding than natural selection. In this case, organisms with undesirable characteristics (smaller size) are overrepresented during reproduction as the result of removing the larger organisms from the breeding population. Robert ArdreyPrescott, Ariz. The tale […]
- Astronomy
Core Finding: Latest, oddest planet hints at how orbs form
A newly discovered planet beyond the solar system has the most massive core of any planet known.
