All Stories by Science News
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Letters
Curiosity cleanup In the article “Protecting the planet” (SN: 11/3/12, p. 32), the sidebar “Keeping Mars clean” gives the impression that Curiosity had not been contaminated, while the opposite is true. Apparently the sterilized craft was opened up and microbial contamination likely occurred. Curiosity’s drill bits may be contaminated with Earth microbes. So now NASA […]
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BOOK REVIEW: Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Everending Earth by Craig Childs
Review by Sid Perkins.
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The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date by Samuel Arbesman
Learning how knowledge changes over time, a mathematician contends, will help humans better make sense of their world. Current, 2012, 242 p., $25.95
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The Miracle of Trees (Wooden Books) by Olavi Huikari
Packed with drawings and engravings, this pocket guide briefly covers the science of trees, from how they grow and reproduce to whether they feel pain. Walker & Co., 2012, 58 p., $12
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Hunger, Thirst, Sex, and Sleep: How the Brain Controls Our Passions by John K. Young
A biologist delves into the varied roles of the hypothalamus, the command center in the brain that controls the most basic human drives. Rowman & Littlefield, 2012, 161 p., $39.95
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Seduced by Logic: Émilie Du Châtelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution by Robyn Arianrhod
The tales of two women — a French aristocrat and a Scottish commoner —intersect in an exploration of how the pair advanced Newton’s ideas about the universe. Oxford Univ., 2012, 338 p., $34.95
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Train Wreck: The Forensics of Rail Disasters by George Bibel
Investigations of 17 accidents help show why trains crash and what those incidents can teach. Johns Hopkins Univ., 2012, 355 p., $29.95
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Letters
To spot a planet “Planetary peekaboo” (SN: 9/22/12, p. 26) says that to hunt for faraway planets, the Kepler spacecraft “watches for blinks occurring when a planet dims a star’s light by passing in front of it.” For a star to dim when a planet moves in front of it requires us to be in […]
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SN Online
ON THE SCENE BLOG Geneticists poke a little fun at themselves during a recent meeting. Read “Buzzword bingo.” Emanuel Soeding/Christian-Albrechts University, William Hay SCIENCE & SOCIETY Mapping U.S. votes for president according to state population gives a new view of politics. See “Red state, blue state.” EARTH Feedback loops are melting more ice than predicted, […]
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Science Future for December 1, 2012
December 15 Activities, films and demonstrations reveal physics principles at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. See bit.ly/SFfullspec December 17 Learn about supermassive black holes with astronomer Günther Hasinger at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. See bit.ly/SFgunther
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Science Past from the issue of December 1, 1962
NEW DATING METHOD FOR MILLION-YEAR-OLD FOSSILS — A new radioactive dating method promises to close one of the major remaining gaps in methods of fixing dates on the geological and archaeological time scales. The new procedure, based on radioactive inequality in nature between uranium-234 and its parent U-238, was originated by David Turber of Columbia’s […]
