Uncategorized
-
19156
This article asserts that the earliest photographic image was taken in 1826. In fact, the earliest photographic image may date to much earlier. Using silver nitrate on linen (1992) and later silver sulfate (1994), Nicholas P.L. Allen was able to reproduce, in large part, the unique visual and chemical properties of the Shroud of Turin. […]
By Science News - Chemistry
Photography at a Crossroads
Researchers are racing to understand the chemical processes used during the past 2 centuries to make photographs before digital-imaging techniques take over completely.
By Science News - Anthropology
Care-Worn Fossils
A nearly toothless fossil jaw found in France has reignited scientific debate over whether the skeletal remains of physically disabled individuals show that our Stone Age ancestors provided life-saving care to the ill and infirm.
By Bruce Bower -
Spider real estate wars: Wake up early
Big spiders in a colony get prime real estate day after day by spinning webs early.
By Susan Milius -
Dolphins bray when chasing down a fish
The first high-resolution analysis of which dolphin is making which sound suggests that hunters blurt out a low-frequency, donkeylike sound that may startle prey into freezing for an instant or attract other dolphins.
By Susan Milius -
Invader ants win by losing diversity
The Argentine ants that are trouncing U.S. species derive much of their takeover power, oddly enough, from losing genetic diversity.
By Susan Milius -
19155
I think it’s more than coincidental that the sound repertoire of babbling babies, compared with the speech sounds in a diversity of languages across the world, lends credence to the idea that there was a mother tongue that goes back to prehistoric times. Readers of the Bible will recall that it was after the fall […]
By Science News -
-
Attachment disorder draws closer look
A substantial minority of children exposed to severe deprivation in institutions as infants can't form close relationships, a condition for which there is no established treatment.
By Bruce Bower -
19154
The initial conclusions of the study of Romanian children raised in orphanages and adopted in Britain would seem to this adoptive parent to be prematurely optimistic. A study based on subjects aged only up to 6 years can hardly conclude that severe deprivation “doesn’t inevitably undermine social functioning.” On the basis of the experience of […]
By Science News - Earth
Warm band may have girdled snowball Earth
A swath a liquid ocean may have hugged the planet's midriff even during the most frigid global climatic episodes between 800 million and 600 million years ago, allowing life to survive.
By Peter Weiss - Health & Medicine
New inner ear hair cells grow in rat tissue
Using a gene known to control hair-cell growth, researchers have grown hair cells in tissue taken from newborn rats' cochleas, raising hopes that inner ear damage may someday be reversible.
By Nathan Seppa