Uncategorized
- Math
Bubbles and Math Olympiads
Predicting the geometric shapes of soap bubble clusters can lead to surprisingly difficult mathematical problems. Which one of these two configurations of five planar bubbles of equal area has the smaller total perimeter? The more symmetric candidate isn’t always the winner. Frank Morgan Frank Morgan of Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., recently illustrated such difficulties […]
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Geo Name Game
Is your name Bob? Want to see how many lakes in the United States are named after you? (Twelve in all, and four of them are in Michigan!) The U.S. Geological Survey’s Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) contains data about nearly 2 million geographic features in the United States. Just enter a name or any […]
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From the June 13, 1931, issue
TWIN ALBINO ROBINS HATCHED WITH NORMAL BIRD Two albino robins, highly interesting and rather rare oddities in the bird world, have been watched from hatching to early maturity at the home of H.D. Shaw of Grinnell, Iowa, and had their pictures taken by Miss Cornelia Clarke, nature photographer. The nest was built high up on […]
- Math
Surprisingly Square
Mathematicians take a fresh look at expressing numbers as the sums of squares.
- Health & Medicine
Immune attack on self halts nerve damage
T cells primed for autoimmune behavior may actually preserve nerves after a damaging blow.
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Catfish can track fish wakes in the dark
Infrared photography has revealed that catfish can stalk their prey by following wakes underwater.
- Health & Medicine
Enzyme defends germ against stomach acid
The newly solved structure of a Helicobacter pylori acid-fighting enzyme has scientists divided about how the enzyme works.
- Earth
Geologists take magnetic view through ice
A new map of the magnetic anomalies in Antarctica and the seafloor surrounding the continent is giving researchers a fresh tool to use in analyzing geologic features that lie hidden beneath thousands of feet of ice or storm-tossed seas.
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18949
With reference to the opinion that hemophiliacs might have expected to feel better and been less likely to treat themselves for internal bleeding following a form of gene therapy, I can only object to the suggestion that hemophiliacs can feel-better themselves out of an internal bleed. As a mother and grandmother of hemophiliacs who coped […]
- Health & Medicine
Genetically altered cells ease hemophilia
A gene therapy using skin cells that are genetically modified to make clotting proteins, multiplied in a lab, and reinjected into a person eases some bleeding in patients with severe hemophilia.
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Endangered condors lay first eggs in wild
A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist has spied a trio of California condors, released to the wild from captive-breeding programs sometime over the past 6 years, attending a pair of eggs.
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18948
The interesting article “Survey probes cosmos from near to far” set me to tilting at windmills. Even before it’s completed, the professional astronomers managing the Sloan Digital Sky Survey should enlist amateur astronomers as asteroid hunters in a way similar to how they’re mobilized by the SETI@home project to search for intelligent signals from space. […]
