Uncategorized
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Blood cues sex choice for parasites
Malaria parasites shift their female-biased production of offspring toward a more evenly balanced sex ratio as an infection proceeds.
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19010
This article describes the myelin sheath as “made of protein.” However, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (online) provides the following definition of myelin: “a soft white somewhat fatty material …” (emphasis added). Ann M. ThrockmortonLa Mesa, Calif. That’s right. There was an oversimplification in the story. Myelin is made up mostly of lipids .–D. Christensen
- Health & Medicine
Learning from leprosy’s nerve damage
The bacterium that causes leprosy directly damages a protective sheathing around many nerve cells.
- Ecosystems
Famine reveals incredible shrinking iguanas
Marine iguanas in the Galápagos Islands are the first vertebrates known to reduce their size during a food shortage and then regrow to their original body lengths.
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19009
I am puzzled at the great concern over the problem of mercury thermometers, as noted in this article. I grant that mercury is a hazard, and I am glad that mercury thermometers are disappearing. But I would think that fluorescent light bulbs are a far more pervasive problem. They also contain a small amount of […]
- Environment
Old thermometers pose new problems
Though health groups advocate getting mercury thermometers out of the home, obtaining sound advice on how to dispose of the thermometers can be problematic.
- Earth
Algae Turn Fish into a Lethal Lunch
Scientists demonstrated that some marine mammals have died from eating fish tainted with a neurotoxic diatom.
- Earth
Most oil enters sea from nonaccidents
Nearly all of the oil entering the marine environment traces not to accidents but to natural seeps and human activities where releases are intentional.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Dawn
New computer simulations suggest that the first stars in the universe were extremely massive and left behind gamma-ray bursts that may already have been detected by telescopes orbiting Earth.
- Health & Medicine
What Activates AIDS?
New studies suggest that a natural process called immune activation—the signaling that alerts immune cells of foreign invaders—plays a key role in explaining why infection with the human immunodeficiency virus progresses to AIDS more quickly in some people than in others.
- Math
A Stranger from Spaceland
“It was the last day of the 1999th year of our era. The pattering of the rain To a Flatlander, a sphere passing through Flatland appears as a line of changing length. had long ago announced nightfall; and I was sitting in the company of my wife, musing on the events of the past and […]
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From the December 28, 1929, issue
YOUTH AND THE SEA “Captain Sylvia,” aged 6 weeks, and her mother, Mrs. J.E. Williamson upon the cover of this week’s issue look at a strange world full of fishes, corals, sharks, morays, and other denizens of the deep. The youthful scientist, symbolic of science itself and its aspirations, was a member of the Field […]
