Uncategorized
- Plants
Fungus of the Month
Wisconsin botanist Tom Volk’s smorgasbord of a mycology Web site offers a variety of enticing distractions. You can find morel mushrooms dressed in their holiday best, fungi that ought to be avoided at a Thanksgiving feast, and much more. Be sure to check out the fungus of the month, then browse the archive of fungal […]
- Materials Science
Materials with Memory
Metal alloys and polymers that can remember a preprogrammed shape may literally reshape technologies ranging from warfare to medicine and car repair.
- Humans
From the March 29, 1930, issue
WANTED: EARLY PLANET PHOTOGRAPHS With the discovery of the planet beyond Neptune, by Lowell Observatory astronomers, many months of observation will be needed before even an approximate idea can be obtained of the orbit in which it is moving. A planet like this moves in the ecliptic, the plane in which Earth itself revolves around […]
- Tech
Ear to Traffic
Listen to the sounds of Web site activity, as massaged by statistician Mark Hansen of Lucent Technologies and translated into musical tones by audio artist Ben Rubin of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Intriguing audio samples offer hints of how aural cues might complement visualization techniques in data mining. Requires a Web browser with RealPlayer […]
- Math
The Incredible Pi Code
Extending this colored grid reveals (to some eyes) a provocative portrait. Researchers have expended a great deal of effort computing as many of those digits as computer technology and mathematical methods allow. Last year, Yasumasa Kanada of the University of Tokyo calculated pi to 206,158,430,000 decimal digits. A high school student has now smashed that […]
- Chemistry
Sensor sniffs out spoiled fish
A new electronic nose detects amine compounds produced when fish decay.
- Chemistry
Air knocks the wind out of nanotubes
Carbon nanotubes are very sensitive to oxygen, an effect that could limit their use in open-air applications.
- Chemistry
Heat spurs growth of tiny carbon trees
Microscopic carbon forests can grow on a graphite surface without the help of catalysts.
- Health & Medicine
Coagulation factor XI boosts clot risk
People who have had a major blood clot in a vein are roughly twice as likely to harbor high concentrations of blood coagulation factor XI as people who haven't.
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19124
Your story didn’t surprise me. I doubted it the first time I saw it. When I read the original story (“Might night-lights blight sight?” SN: 5/29/99, p. 351), I said, “Wait a minute! Wouldn’t that mean that children raised north of the Arctic Circle should have unusually high levels of myopia?” Did the researchers involved […]
- Health & Medicine
Myopia link to night lights doubted
Two studies cast doubt on the apparent link between night lights in a baby's nursery and an increased risk of being nearsighted later in childhood.
- Astronomy
X-ray telescope vanishes
Astro-E, a Japanese X-ray observatory, fell back to Earth and burned up just after launch on Feb. 9.
