Uncategorized
- Animals
Hour of Babble: Young birds sing badly in the morning
Young zebra finches do badly at song practice for the first few hours after they wake up but then recover, and even improve, their musical skills.
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Math minus Grammar: Number skills survive language losses
Three men who suffered left brain damage that undermined their capacity to speak and understand language still possessed a firm grip of mathematics.
- Planetary Science
Spying Saturn’s Light Show: Anomalous aurora dazzles scientists
The dancing lights that paint Saturn's sky stands out from all other auroras observed in the solar system.
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19519
Another hypothesis for the polish on the Stone Age corundum ax head is that the Stone Age people never had absolutely pure corundum, which indeed would have required diamond to polish. It is possible that these people used one grade of corundum to make the ax head and a slightly harder grade to polish it. […]
- Archaeology
In the Buff: Stone Age tools may have derived luster from diamond
Ancient Chinese people may have used diamonds to polish their stone axes to mirrorlike finishes.
- Earth
Sky High: Gamma-ray bursts are common in Earth’s upper atmosphere
Enigmatic bursts of high-energy gamma rays produced Earth's atmosphere are stronger and more frequent than previously thought.
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Hearing Repaired: Gene therapy restores guinea pigs’ hearing
By turning on a gene that's normally active only during embryonic development, researchers have restored hearing in deaf guinea pigs.
- Astronomy
Images from the Edge
Examining nearby reaches of the universe at ultraviolet wavelengths, a recently launched spacecraft has found regions of star birth in unexpected places.
- Humans
Letters from the February 19, 2005, issue of Science News
Negative thinking The article “Sweet Glow: Nanotube sensor brightens path to glucose detection” (SN: 1/1/05, p. 3) mentions “ferricyanide, an electron-hungry molecule.” This puzzled me no end. Aren’t ferricyanide molecules, unlike their ions, electrically neutral? I’m trying to visualize ravenous molecules gobbling up innocent electrons. Ernest NussbaumBethesda, Md. Ferricyanide is indeed an ion, with a […]
- Chemistry
Molecular surgery traps hydrogen inside carbon cage
In a feat of precision chemistry, scientists have locked a pair of hydrogen atoms inside a soccer ball–shaped carbon molecule known as a buckyball.
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19518
This article mentions several possible triggers for migraines, with a patent foramen ovale being one. There is also the change-in-weather trigger, from which I suffer. All the symptoms mentioned in the article could cause a fairly sudden change in blood pressure. A weather-related change in barometric pressure might have the same effect. I wonder if […]
- Health & Medicine
Against the Migraine
Migraines may be among the problems that stem from a common but rarely diagnosed heart defect, and researchers have discovered that repairing the defect cures some of the headaches.
