Uncategorized
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Novel enzyme provides sperm’s spark of life
A molecule in sperm triggers a fertilized egg to begin developing.
- Anthropology
Neandertals return at German cave site
Researchers who tracked down the location of a German cave where the first Neandertal skeleton was discovered in 1856 have unearthed new Neandertal finds.
- Astronomy
Magnetars: A missing link
A rare group of ultradense stars may be magnetars, objects with the strongest magnetic fields known in the universe.
- Health & Medicine
RNA interferes with cancer-cell growth
To curb the growth of cancer cells, scientists are silencing genes by introducing small strands of RNA.
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19128
Perhaps much of the controversy about evolutionary psychology devolves from forgetting some basic biological definitions. The gene is the unit of inheritance, which has a complex and imprecise relationship with the mature, viable organism that has inherited it. The unit of evolution is the individual organism. Therefore, the arguments about what is more important in […]
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Evolutionary Upstarts
Theories of the evolution of the human mind are evolving, with some researchers now presenting alternatives to the dominant notion that genetic competition for survival during the Stone Age yielded brains stocked with a bevy of instincts for specific types of thinking.
- Plants
The Wood Detective
Alex Wiedenhoeft belongs to the elite profession of wood identifier, the person to call when a crime investigator, museum curator, archaeologist, or patent attorney with an unusual client really needs to know what that splinter really is.
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19127
It occurs to me that the techniques described in this article could have a wide variety of applications outside the biological sciences. For example, imprinted high-temperature ceramic materials could be used as less-expensive catalysts in automobiles and factory emission-controls systems. And filters made from such materials might be used to greatly reduce the quantity of […]
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19126
Chocolate as heart medicine? Not for those hearts that chocolate’s caffeine sends bumping around in their ribcages, it isn’t. How about doing another article, this time on the deleterious effects of caffeine in various medical conditions (erratic hearts being just one)? Caroline VickreyBethlehem, Pa. To be told that research is putting chocolate with tea and […]
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19125
It comes as no surprise to me that the findings of the study in this article may have implications for teaching kids to read better. Historic perspective suggests that rapidly presented acoustic and visual stimuli can benefit reading instruction, as Tallal asserts. We knew this process as “flash cards” when I was in school. Michele […]
- Humans
From the September 17, 1932, issue
ANOTHER GREAT WALL The Great Wall of China, winding like a mighty, protecting serpent along the old northern boundary of the Celestial Kingdom– Hadrian’s Wall, the Great Wall of Britain, built and fortified to shut the barbarians of the north out of southern Britain in Roman days– And now, added to this small, select list […]
- Health & Medicine
Conquering Surgical Pain
Created by the Neurosurgical Service at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), these fascinating Web pages chronicle the introduction of ether as an anesthetic in 1846 at MGH and subsequent developments in anesthesiology. Go to: http://neurosurgery.mgh.harvard.edu/History/ether1.htm
