Uncategorized
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Microbes Fire an Oozie: Slime engines may push bacteria along
Some bacteria may propel themselves with slime engines: clusters of nozzles at the ends of the microbes that exude viscous goop.
- Health & Medicine
Brave New Drug: Compound stops cowpox and smallpox viruses
A new drug called HDP-CDV stops smallpox virus from replicating in lab tests and cowpox virus from replicating in mice, suggesting it could work as a treatment for smallpox in people.
- Anthropology
Unified Erectus: Fossil suggests single human ancestor
A newly found fossil skull may clear up an ongoing debate about whether the human ancestor Homo erectus was a single or several species.
- Physics
The Black Hole Next Door
Microscopic black holes—fleeting replicas of the huge, matter-gobbling ones in space—may be detected soon in our atmosphere and at a big particle collider now being built.
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19066
The article says of physicists’ thinking about black holes in Earth’s atmosphere, “Those newly created black holes would then quickly decay, harmlessly raining subatomic particles down onto our planet and ourselves.” Surely not every physicist thinks the possibility of creating a black hole is not dangerous. Could we not hear from the opponents of make-your-own-black-hole […]
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19065
I was surprised to see no mention of small comets hitting Earth’s atmosphere over the eons as a source of surface water. This explanation, based on atmospheric observations, has gained growing acceptance over the past several years. Kenneth Saum Cotuit, Mass. Jonathan I. Lunine says that if local bodies provided water to Earth, then “Mars […]
- Earth
Water for the Rock
A long-popular theory about how Earth got wet—that the oceans are puddles left by an ancient rain of comets—doesn't seem to hold water, and new hypotheses suggest that the celestial pantry is now empty of a key ingredient in the recipe for Earth.
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From the March 19, 1932, issue
EXPLOSIONS USED TO LOCATE OIL FIELDS IN SOUTHWEST A beautiful explosion, so large that the camera could only catch a part of it with sufficient clarity to detail its streaked and billowing effects, is reproduced on the front cover of this week’s Science News Letter. It is one of hundreds of such blasts that have […]
- Physics
Signatures of the Invisible
Contemporary artists worked with CERN particle physicists to create pieces of art that respond to (rather than simply illustrate) the preoccupations of modern physics. This quirky Web site, hosted by the London Institute, provides glimpses of the artworks that resulted from this collaboration. Go to: http://www.signatures.linst.ac.uk/
- Health & Medicine
Computer sharing tackles anthrax
A drug-discovery effort using more than a million personal computers worldwide has identified thousands of compounds that could form the basis of a cure for anthrax.
- Paleontology
Early hunters are guilty as charged
Scientists find that hunting is the likely cause of New Zealand's prehistoric bird extinctions rather than habitat destruction or pest introduction.
- Computing
Finding networks within networks
A new mathematical procedure, or algorithm, picks out those members within a larger network—for instance, related sites on the World Wide Web—that have especially close ties.
