All Stories by Science News
- Humans
From the February 6, 1937, issue
Cause of floods revealed and bending light to view distant galaxies.
- Earth
Electronics Recycling
What do you do with your used, broken, or obsolete electronic devices? Where can you take your electronics, and what should you look for to protect both your identity and the environment? You can find the answers at the Electronics Industry Alliance’s recycling Web site, which provides an online guide to electronics recyclers and disposal […]
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19791
The author of this article seems to feel, like most other writers do, that “the western United States” properly covers all geographical bases. Believe me, the Pacific Northwest is anything but dry. One other point about geography: Weather phenomena, and other stuff, occurring in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, or Kansas are not happening in […]
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19790
I am disappointed in this article on the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summary. It was a political summary, not the 1,500 page report that’s due in May 2007. How often have you seen a scientific summary published 3 months before the final report? I am concerned that you do not appear to […]
- Humans
Letters from the February 10, 2007, issue of Science News
Grape gripe “A Toast to Healthy Hearts: Wine compounds benefit blood vessels” (SN: 12/2/06, p. 356) leaves us up in the air with this statement: “. . . since the traditional wine-making techniques still in use in southwestern France and Sardinia increase concentrations of polymeric procyanidins, he says, other vintners may soon adopt such methods.” […]
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19789
This article states that as a result of an internal representation of their bodies and parts, macaques “gradually come to mentally regard their hands and arms, and then their entire bodies, from a third-person perspective.” Isn’t that a good definition of self-awareness, one of the supposed differences between humans and other animals and between humans […]
- Humans
From the January 30, 1937, issue
A new atomic gun, an old human skull, and making stronger rayon.
- Humans
Malaria Control
While you’re sending an e-mail or surfing the Web, your computer could be helping to tackle one of Africa’s major challenges: malaria. In a project coordinated by CERN, volunteer computers in homes and offices run a simulation program called MalariaControl.net, developed by researchers at the Swiss Tropical Institute. The program simulates how malaria spreads through […]
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19788
No mention is made in this article of the huge amount of petrochemical inputs required both for large-scale farming of corn and for the distilling process required to produce ethanol. When these and other environmental costs are factored in, the promotion of corn-based ethanol as fuel will ultimately be exposed as an environmentally disastrous policy. […]
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19787
The theory of “nuclear winter” was originally put forward by an Eastern European mathematician in the 1980s. Some months later, it was shown that an error in his original calculations so vastly exaggerated “nuclear winter” as to make it meaningless. Still, the dramatic concept of a “nuclear winter” obviously lives on in the public’s mind […]
- Humans
Letters from the February 3, 2007, issue of Science News
All together now It is not only the scientific literature that documents the unexpected “doughnut” pattern in swarms (“The Mind of the Swarm,” SN: 11/25/06, p. 347). Italo Calvino’s fictional Mr. Palomar observed (rather more lyrically) about the flocking of Roman starlings, “Finally a form emerges from the confused flutter of wings, advances, condenses: it […]
- Humans
From the January 23, 1937, issue
Ancient slum dwellers, expanding universe questioned, and a math puzzle solved.
