Science News

All Stories by Science News

  1. Humans

    From the September 15, 1934, issue

    Magnificent Mt. Rainier, high-altitude rockets, and how motion pictures change children's attitudes.

  2. Click and Clone

    The Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah has an interactive Web site that teaches the basics of somatic cell cloning, the type of cloning used to create Dolly the sheep. The central focus of the click-and-clone exercise—to clone a brown mouse named Mimi—is based on a real experiment performed by researchers at […]

  3. Humans

    Letters from the September 18, 2004, issue of Science News

    A Pauling oversight I was surprised to find no mention of Linus Pauling’s theory of anesthesia in “Comfortably Numb” (SN: 7/3/04, p. 8: Comfortably Numb). In 1961, Pauling provided detailed arguments that interactions between anesthetic agents and water, rather than lipids, form hydrate microcrystals in the brain that entrap side chains of proteins and interfere […]

  4. Humans

    From the September 8, 1934, issue

    Ditches on the moon's surface, 12,000-year-old bones and dart points, and nature as waves of knowledge in the mind.

  5. Planetary Science

    Exploring Mars

    Here’s your chance to help NASA explore the surface of Mars. At its Marsoweb site, the agency provides detailed maps, engineering data, and interactive tools for studying the Red Planet’s alien terrain. Visitors are invited to look for and report important geologic features that haven’t yet been catalogued or even viewed by researchers. Go to: […]

  6. 19459

    There is an error in this article. These Cassini results are based on thermal-infrared, not near-infrared data. The measurements were taken by the Composite Infrared Spectrometer and covered the spectral range from 100 to 450 inverse centimeters (100 to 22 micrometers). John PearlGreenbelt, Md. The Cassini craft also looks at near-infrared wavelengths, but not in […]

  7. 19458

    This article may have missed a “magic bullet” that would be effective against many forms of cancer. The researchers concentrate on a drug that blocks a mutated form of the epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor, which may benefit 5 percent of lung cancer patients. Yet the article states that “if normal cell growth runs amok, […]

  8. Humans

    Letters from the September 11, 2004, issue of Science News

    Say what? I don’t think anyone should be surprised that squirrels have figured out how to say “nyah, nyah” to rattlesnakes (“Ultrasound alarms by ground squirrels,” SN: 7/3/04, p. 14: Ultrasound alarms by ground squirrels). After all, it’s what they’ve been saying to cats, dogs, and bird-feeder owning humans for years. R. Kelly WagnerAustin, Texas […]

  9. 19457

    I am wondering why the subject of genetically modified crops didn’t enter the discussion of diminishing plant diversity in this article. When genes from bacteria, insects, and other totally unrelated organisms are inserted into the genome of a plant, we have no idea what effect this will have on plant diversity and survival. The effect […]

  10. Humans

    From the September 1, 1934, issue

    A new German zeppelin under construction, fossils of giant pigs, and word recognition in dogs.

  11. Humans

    A Lewis Carroll Scrapbook

    Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Oxford, is better known as Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and other works. A scrapbook kept by Dodgson is now available online, via the Library of Congress. It contains a variety of items, including newspaper clippings, illustrations, and photographs. The Web […]

  12. 19456

    Your readers should be aware that the increased fatal cancer risk posed by annual whole-body CT scans, although still quite high, is in fact almost five times lower than that stated in this article, which says that annual scans from age 45 to 75 would increase a person’s lifetime risk of dying from cancer by […]