Uncategorized

  1. Live from Antarctica

    Mixing live Webcasts with interactive presentations, San Francisco’s Exploratorium documents a journey to Antarctica. Team members interview scientists, dive and film underwater, climb a volcano, and visit a vast frigid desert. The Web site also features reference material on a variety of topics, including how fish adapt to icy waters, and views of the continent’s […]

    By Science News
  2. Math

    Knot Possible

    Knot theorists are getting closer to their goal of developing practical procedures for distinguishing knotted curves from unknotted ones.

    By Ivars Peterson

  3. From the December 5, 1931, issue

    PROTECTION EXTENDED NEARLY EXTINCT TEDDY BEARS Koalas, known colloquially in Australia as native bears, real, live teddy bears in soft, plushlike fur, have lately become the objects of special solicitude, both official and private, in the far island-continent that is their home. For several generations nobody paid any more attention to them than Americans pay […]

    By Science News
  4. Earth

    Fishy data hid decline in global catch

    Many coastal fisheries are in trouble, yet according to figures reported to the United Nations, the annual global yield has appeared to be stable or even growing.

    By Ben Harder
  5. Ecosystems

    Move over, Leo. Give me more elbow room

    The average size of the largest land animals on each of 25 oceanic islands and five continents strongly depends on the land area there.

    By Sid Perkins
  6. Earth

    Transgenes migrate into old races of maize

    Genes from bioengineered corn have somehow strayed into the traditional varieties of southern Mexico.

    By Susan Milius
  7. Earth

    Dried-up California lake gets muddy facial

    A new dust-abatement program is transforming the nation's biggest source of respirable dust into a sea of nonpolluting mud.

    By Janet Raloff
  8. Health & Medicine

    Protein fragment halts type I diabetes

    A new protein-based drug injected into people just starting to show signs of diabetes halts the disease.

    By Nathan Seppa
  9. Health & Medicine

    Human-cloning claim creates controversy

    A biotech company has begun cloning human embryos.

    By John Travis
  10. Astronomy

    Craft Probes Alien Planet’s Atmosphere

    Astronomers have for the first time detected the atmosphere of a planet that lies well beyond the solar system.

    By Ron Cowen
  11. Health & Medicine

    Kawasaki patients show coronary calcium

    The heart attack risk associated with Kawasaki disease, a childhood inflammatory disease that can cause aneurysms, may stem from calcium build-up in coronary arteries.

    By Nathan Seppa
  12. Health & Medicine

    Light blow to chest can be fatal

    A light blow to the heart can cause cardiac arrest, even when the blow isn't hard enough to cause injury.

    By Nathan Seppa