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19190
In regard to the ability of people unable to speak a language to detect lying, this may be a result not of their inability to speak or understand any language but merely their inability to speak or understand the language the speakers were using. Some years ago, while visiting Japan, I saw a television show […]
- Health & Medicine
Gene may keep breast cancer at bay
Scientists have identified a gene that seems to protect against some common breast cancers.
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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. […]
- 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.
- 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.
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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 […]
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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 […]
- Math
Card Shuffling Shenanigans
Shuffling cards is a tricky business. It’s also a lucrative one for gambling casinos. In a game such as blackjack, an astute player can try to memorize the cards already played to have a better chance of predicting which cards will come up later, thus potentially gaining an advantage over the dealer and the casino. […]
- Astronomy
Something New on the Sun
The sharpest visible-light images of the sun ever recorded are revealing puzzling, new features of sunspots, the dark regions where the sun's powerful magnetic field is concentrated.
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19153
Your article describes the economic and environmental costs of semiconductor chips. Interestingly, the impacts on the environment are very similar for the manufacture of solar cells. Many environmentalists place such unrealistic expectations on solar cell energy that they overlook certain facts. First, solar cells yield at most 30 percent efficiency. Second, solar cells do not […]
- Tech
Hidden Costs: It takes much stuff to make one tiny chip
A new analysis reveals that the production of a single 2-gram microchip requires nearly 2 kilograms of chemicals and fossil fuels.
- Health & Medicine
Attack of the Clones: Immune cells single out melanoma tumors
Scientists can extract immune system cells that recognize tumor cells from people with melanoma, culture the rare cells to greatly increase their number, and inject them into the patients, sometimes putting the brakes on cancer.
