Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Blood vessels (sans blood) shape organs
Even before they begin to carry blood, blood vessels provide signals that help spark the development of organs such as the liver.
- Animals
Meerkat pups grow fatter with extra adults
Meerkat pups growing up in large, cooperative groups are heftier because there are more adults to entreat for food.
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We read that the Chaco Anasazi builders used “large timbers” 5 meters long, 22 centimeters in diameter, and weighing 275 kilograms. As anyone who splits his own firewood could tell you, something is amiss here. The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics tells us that ponderosa pine has a density of about 0.5 gram per cubic […]
- Anthropology
Isotopes reveal sources of ancient timbers
Isotopic analysis of architectural timbers from ancient dwellings in the U.S. Southwest has shown from which distant forests the massive logs came.
- Astronomy
Probe’s comet encounter yields close-ups
A crippled NASA probe successfully navigated close enough to Comet Borrelly to capture and beam home black-and-white and infared images of its nucleus and new data about ions and other particles that radiate from it.
- Physics
Atomic Crowds Tied by Quantum Thread
Quantum states of record numbers of atoms—entire atom clouds—get blended together by physicists wielding a new, relatively simple technique in quantum telecommunications and computing.
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Joined at the Senses
As evidence accumulates for the existence of brain cells that handle many types of sensory information, some scientists challenge the popular notion that perception is grounded in five separate senses.
- Astronomy
After a failure, a new craft to sail
Despite the July 20 failure of its mission to test the unfurling of a solar sail in a suborbital trajectory, the Planetary Society announced plans in late August to conduct a second test of a sail-propelled craft.
- Astronomy
A meteorite’s pristine origins
A rare, carbon-rich meteorite that fell into a frozen Canadian lake last year ranks as the most pristine of such specimens ever found.
- Astronomy
Gravity’s lens: Finding a sextet of images
Astronomers have for the first time found a gravitational lens in which the image of a distant galaxy has been split into six distinct images.
- Astronomy
Gravity’s lens: Finding a dim cluster
Relying solely on a gravitational mirage rather than visible images, astronomers have discovered a previously unknown cluster of galaxies and measured its distance from Earth.
- Earth
Dust, the Thermostat
Analyses suggest that dust has profound, complex, and far-reaching effects on the planet's climate.
