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Nerve connections come ready to assemble
Nerve cells seem to package key components of synapses—the specialized complexes than connect the nerve cells—and collectively ship the material to points where these complexes take shape.
By John Travis - Animals
The truth is, frogs bluff and crabs cheat
Two research teams say they've caught wild animals bluffing, only the second and third examples (outside of primate antics) ever recorded.
By Susan Milius - Astronomy
Milky Way feasts on its neighbors
Three new studies reveal that Earth's home galaxy indulged in cannibalism to assemble its visible halo, the diffuse distribution of stars that surrounds the dense core and disk of the Milky Way.
By Ron Cowen - Math
Tilt-A-Whirl Chaos (I)
Tilt-A-Whirl. Sellner Manufacturing Co. Schematic drawing (top view) showing the Tilt-A-Whirl’s geometry. Much of the fun of an amusement park ride results from its stomach-churning, mind-jangling unpredictability. The Tilt-A-Whirl, for example, spins its passengers in one direction, then another, sometimes hesitating between forays and sometimes swinging abruptly from one motion to another. A rider never […]
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19095
In doing your usual excellent job of presenting information in interesting and lighthearted ways, you implied that bug zappers control mosquitoes. In fact, bug zappers don’t attract mosquitoes and therefore kill very few of them. They do kill large numbers of harmless and even beneficial insects, including pollinators and insects such as the crane fly, […]
By Science News - Chemistry
Mosquito Magnets
Your skin chemicals lure blood-sucking insects to their next meal.
By Corinna Wu - Health & Medicine
Into the Tank: Pressurized oxygen is best at countering carbon monoxide exposure
Oxygen treatment for serious carbon monoxide poisoning prevents long-term brain damage best if delivered as pressurized gas.
By Nathan Seppa - Health & Medicine
Loosen Up
Bacterial toxin may lead to less painful treatments for diabetes and brain cancer.
By John Travis - Humans
Flame Out: Fishy findings sustain, then snuff, stellar career
Investigators have concluded that a young, up-and-coming physicist repeatedly faked data and committed other types of scientific misconduct.
By Peter Weiss - Health & Medicine
Boning up on calcium shouldn’t be sporadic
The gains in bone health can quickly disappear when people stop taking extra calcium.
By Janet Raloff -
19119
Regarding the discovery of the dinosaur heart with the single aorta, your readers should note that this morphology is more likely to be related to high blood pressure than metabolic rate per se. The typical reptilian heart, with its incompletely divided ventricle and double aorta, is quite functional at separating oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. The […]
By Science News - Paleontology
Telltale Dino Heart Hints at Warm Blood
A recently discovered fossil dinosaur heart is more like the heart of birds and mammals than that of crocodiles, providing further evidence that dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded.