Uncategorized
- Plants
Stout Potatoes: Armed with a new gene, spuds fend off blight
Splicing a gene from a blight-resistant wild potato into varieties used for consumption could lead to blight immunity for all spuds.
- Tech
Counting calories on the road
People are programmed to spend about the same number of calories per day—roughly the energy of one hot dog—on daily travel, according to new analysis of British transportation statistics.
- Astronomy
Revved-up antics of a pulsar jet
Flailing like an out-of-control fire hose, a mammoth jet of charged particles gushing from a collapsed star is varying its shape and brightness more rapidly than any other jet known in the heavens.
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- Health & Medicine
Viral protein could help liver therapy
Researchers have developed a method of delivering gene therapies to targeted cells that makes use of viral proteins rather than whole virus particles.
- Chemistry
An inexpensive catalyst generates hydrogen
A new, inexpensive catalyst could make hydrogen generation cleaner.
- Anthropology
Lucy’s kind takes humanlike turn
A new analysis of fossils from a more than 3-million-year-old species in the human evolutionary family reveals that the males were only moderately larger than the females, a finding that has implications for ancient social behavior.
- Paleontology
Learning from the Present
New field studies of unfossilized bones, as well as databases full of information about current fossil excavations and previous fossil finds, are providing insights into how complete—or incomplete—Earth's fossil record may be.
- Astronomy
Supernova Spectacular
Studying starburst galaxies, relatively nearby galaxies that are undergoing a tremendous rate of star formation, may reveal how elliptical galaxies arose and black holes grew in the early universe.
- Humans
From the July 15, 1933, issue
LIVELY YOUNG MARMOSETS SURVIVE IN CAPTIVITY Two lively, chattering young marmosets are growing up in San Francisco without the slightest notion of what “rare specimens” they are. They have a very great distinction of surviving birth in captivity. Naturalists say that this type of New World monkey is often born in captivity but usually the […]
- Earth
National Atlas
Provided by the U.S. Department of the Interior, this Web site features an interactive map generator that allows users to view and download custom maps of the United States. The maps access a database that includes information about the nation’s agriculture, biological resources, climate, environment, geology, history, transportation, watersheds, population distribution, county boundaries, and other […]
- Math
Improving the Odds in RISK
RISK is a classic board game of global conquest. First published in 1959, this war game remains a popular pastime–and continues to attract mathematical attention. Recent analyses reveal that the chances of winning a battle are considerably more favorable for the attacker than was originally suspected. “The logical recommendation is . . . for the […]
