Uncategorized
- Humans
Rare animals get U.N. protection
Several types of whales, river dolphins, the great white shark, and an unusual camel are among animals designated to receive new or heightened protection under a United Nations treaty.
- Health & Medicine
Making the optic nerve sprout anew
A compound made during inflammation, a natural reaction to injury, can induce optic nerve regeneration in a lab-dish concoction including rat retinal ganglion cells.
- Health & Medicine
Catching macular degeneration early
Scientists have developed a test that uses the eye's ability to adapt to darkness as a test for age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in elderly people.
- Humans
From the October 8, 1932, issue
AUTUMN BRINGS NOBILITY EVEN TO CORNFIELD WEEDS Autumn is the time of the Truce of God. Even as a beggar may assume a certain dignity when he is about to die, so the commonest weeds often take on beauty when all things pause to make last salute to the retreating sun, before the hora novissima […]
- Animals
That special wax lasts after courtship
Sandpipers' special wax for their wings during the breeding season may have less to do with courting a mate and more to do with sitting on eggs.
- Health & Medicine
A Prized Worm
This year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine went to researchers who pioneered the use of the tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans as an animal model for exploring basic processes involved in the development and behavior of multicellular organisms. Learn more about the remarkable C. elegans from a Vanderbilt University news feature about this “elegant worm” […]
- Health & Medicine
Stressing out
A gene variant reduces people's response to the stress hormone cortisol, and people with the variant are less likely to have risk factors for heart disease and diabetes.
- Archaeology
Maya warfare takes 10 steps forward
The discovery of hieroglyphic-covered steps on the side of a Maya pyramid has yielded new information about warfare between two competing city-states around 1,500 years ago.
-
19134
Are we breaking the laws of thermodynamics? I often wonder, in discussions of hydrogen as fuel, how one can provide energy to split water to get hydrogen and oxygen, then react them together as fuel, and expect ever to get a net gain in energy. Tom OstwaldUniversity of CaliforniaSanta Barbara, Calif. The media have lately […]
- Chemistry
Hydrogen: The Next Generation
Researchers are looking for more sustainable ways to generate hydrogen, which burns cleanly but is typically made from fossil fuel.
-
19096
The Japanese have developed an “artificial shark-fin machine” that produces a product quite similar in texture to the real thing. It’s being used in restaurants in Hong Kong. Let’s hope people’s tastes change before it is too late for the sharks. P.W.L. KwanBoston, Mass.
- Earth
Clipping the Fin Trade
New research and policy developments aim to curb the wasteful and gruesome practice of killing sharks solely for their fins.
