All Stories by Science News
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19928
There is a detail not explicit in this article that fits the computer network analogy. By its flight path, each bird adds its personal input and helps guide the course of the flock. Don BurnapRapid City, S.D. Andrea Cavagna, a physicist at Italy’s National Research Council, says that those studying how flocks of starlings coordinate […]
- Earth
Find My Valentine—or Other Places
The federal Geographic Names Information System lists 14 sites around the nation named Valentine—Including Alta Mills, Kan., and Bedison, Mo., for which Valentine is an alternate moniker. You can search for locations that may share your name, a name associated with some holiday (like Santa Claus, Ind.), or the name of an object of your […]
- Humans
From the February 12, 1938, issue
Radio tower reaches for the sky, making a canyon the hard way, and forecasting the next big drought.
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19927
This article offers a mechanism to explain the hygiene hypothesis featured prominently in past issues of Science News. If exposure to microbes has a beneficial effect on the immune response of mice, it may also help humans as well. The relatively antiseptic environments that many Western children experience today as compared to the past may […]
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19926
This article was wonderful. We have had light and electron microscopes. Can we look forward to atom-wave microscopes? Bill SchindeleThousand Oaks, Calif. Yes. A team led by Bodil Holst at Graz University of Technology in Austria has built a microscope that bombards a sample with helium waves and then measures how the waves reflect to […]
- Humans
Letters from the February 16, 2008, issue of Science News
Inert placebo? Regarding “Getting the Red Out” (SN: 1/19/08, p. 35): While drug companies wish to market their products, my attention is drawn to the fact that 1 in 8 of the control group of psoriasis patients was cured by placebo effect. Who will investigate the process therein? Is there a market for it? Carson […]
- Humans
From the February 5, 1938, issue
Tiny shells test lenses, the rules of radioactivity, and discovering new lunar terrain.
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Marine Cloudmakers
As bubbles in the ocean burst, they release entrained microorganisms and other marine materials. As they’re spewed into the air, these particles can serve as the basis of cloud particles. Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego explain the phenomenon in this Jan. 8 mini-video and even speculate […]
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19925
No way do I understand where the percent changes come from. A change from $80,192 million to $80,494 million is listed as a 1.6 percent decrease. David AdamsGarnet Valley, Pa. The numbers are adjusted for inflation, which will erode buying power by the time fiscal year 2009 begins. At the time we wrote the story, […]
- Humans
Wish List: FY ’09 budget proposal ups physical sciences
President Bush's proposed 2009 federal budget would boost R&D in the physical sciences while reining in biomedical research.
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19924
A familiar side effect of marijuana smoking is increased appetite, often for sweet foods. It is doubtful that the marijuana smokers immediately rush to brush their teeth after eating “munchies.” If they smoke multiple times throughout a day, they may be constantly nibbling on sweets, leaving food lodged between teeth and gums, a fairly direct […]
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19923
I have heard that whales evolved millions of years ago into their present form, including their very large brains. We humans must be relatively recent in terms of our brain structures. Are there data concerning evolutionary development in whales? Matthew KabriskyDayton, Ohio “Learning to Listen: How some vertebrates evolved biological sonar” (SN: 5/14/05, p. 314) […]
