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I’ve been hosting an interactive forum on the Web for the past 7 years. Our community is made up of people with chronic inflammatory bowel diseases and their families and friends. The nature of these diseases is such that sufferers tend to be socially isolated, and finding each other on the Web has opened up […]
- Astronomy
Dusty Disks May Reveal Hidden Worlds
Images of gaps, rings, arcs, warps, and clumps in disks of dusty debris surrounding nearby stars are providing new clues about the nature of planets that lie beyond the solar system.
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From the April 30, 1932, issue
SPIRAL NEBULA IN ANDROMEDA BORDERED WITH STAR CLUSTERS Tiny flecks of hazy light around the borders of one of the most famous of the spiral nebulae, the one in the constellation Andromeda, are now believed to be great globular clusters of stars–literally swarms of suns crowded like clouds of gnats that hang over the marshes […]
- Physics
Fluid Beauty
Visualizations of a swirling jet, an insect’s wake, agitated sand, and other types of fluid motion can produce stunning images. The American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics annually recognizes research efforts that generate images having both scientific merit and aesthetic appeal. Its gallery of fluid motion features a variety of winning photographs (pdf images) […]
- Physics
Not-So-Neutral Neutron: Clearer view of neutron reveals charged locales
A sharp, new picture of the neutron reveals that rather than being uniformly electrically neutral, the particle contains regions of positive and negative charge.
- Materials Science
Self-Sutures: New material knots up on its own
Researchers have used a new biodegradable material to make surgical sutures that knot and tighten themselves as they warm to body temperature.
- Math
Getting Clobbered
Clobber is a new two-person game that’s easy to learn and fun to play and, for the mathematically inclined, rife with analytical possibility. Initial placement of white and black stones on a 5 x 6 rectangular board. The “standard” game is played on a rectangular grid of squares–say, a portion of a checkerboard. One player […]
- Anthropology
Attack of the Ancestor: Neandertals took a stab at violent assaults
The pieced-together fragments of a 36,000-year-old Neandertal skull reveal a bony scar caused by a blow from a sharp tool or weapon.
- Health & Medicine
Deadly Pickup: Enzyme permits plague germ to ride in fleas
Acquisition of a gene that enables the plague bacterium to live inside blood-sucking fleas may have set the stage for the Black Death.
- Earth
The Silent Type: Pacific Northwest hit routinely by nonquakes
Once every 14 months or so, portions of coastal British Columbia and northwestern Washington State experience a slow ground motion that, if released all at once, would generate an earthquake measuring more than 6 on the Richter scale.
- Astronomy
Super Wallops: Tracking the origin of cosmic rays
Two new studies shed light on the longstanding mystery of where cosmic rays—the energetic charged particles that bombard our galaxy—originate.
- Health & Medicine
Risk Factor: Genetic defect hikes breast cancer threat
A mutation already linked to several types of cancer doubles the risk of breast cancer in a woman and multiplies men's slight risk of the disease even more dramatically.
