All Stories by Science News
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19211
This article recommended shock absorbers and cushioned seats. Did this study survey what type of bikes the volunteers rode? Doug LandonSimi Valley, Calif. Study coauthor Ferdinand Frauscher notes that although most of the long-time bikers now use bikes with shock absorbers and padded seats, they almost all originally rode bikes with little or no padding […]
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19210
Contrary to your article, animal cells do not possess “cell walls,” as suggested by “proteases are usually much smaller and don’t inhabit cell walls.” Plants have cell walls; animal cells are bound by a single lipid bilayer membrane. David Winialski Tallahassee, Fla.
- Humans
From the December 3, 1932, issue
“QUICKER’N A WINK” Quick as a wink is a great deal too slow. This proverbial epitome of speed is beaten a dozen times over by the newest trick in scientific high-speed photography, which can take 13 “frames” of motion pictures of a human eye during the fortieth of a second it spends in getting shut. […]
- Humans
From the June 7, 1930, issue
COMET MAY CAUSE METEORIC DISPLAY If you watch the sky during the nights of early June, you may be treated to an unusual display of meteors, or “shooting stars.” For comet 1930d, as the astronomers call the new visitor to the heavens discovered by the Germans Schwassmann and Wachmann, is expected to cause a meteoric […]
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Mystic Stuff
Scientists describe and ponder their own brushes with spiritual, mystical, and psychic happenings in the online journal called The Archives of Scientists’ Transcendent Experiences (TASTE). Psychologist Charles T. Tart of the University of California, Davis, produces the journal and hopes to build a database of accounts by bona fide, show-me-the-data researchers for future investigations into […]
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19192
Your article shows hazy pictures from Great Smoky Mountains National Park and says the cause of the haze is “volatile organic compounds released by trees.” I’m the air-quality specialist in the park, and I know that 60 percent of the particle mass in the air is sulfate from power plants, not trees, and 80 percent […]
- Health & Medicine
Food Forays
Ever wonder what the Vikings ate on their lengthy voyages to new lands? What pioneers cooked on their treks along the Oregon Trail? Who invented the potato chip? The fascinating answers to these and many other food-related questions can be found at the Food Timeline, a collection of links to related Web pages, compiled by […]
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19203
Many people who are exploring the possible connection between childhood vaccines and autism claim that the culprit is not the vaccines themselves, but the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal. Does the Danish MMR vaccine contain it? Anne SealsSumner, Wash. Thimerosal has never been used in the MMR vaccine, either in the United States or in Denmark .–B. […]
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19202
What is reported in this article is a new application of an old idea. In the 1950s and early 1960s, engineers would check a computer by setting a radio beside the central processing unit to pick up the electromagnetic signals put out by switching vacuum tubes and, later, transistors. By programming so that the switching […]
- Humans
From the November 26, 1932, issue
BOYS WORSE OFFENDERS To aid the harassed parents of temperish youngsters, Dr. Florence L. Goodenough of the Institute of Child Welfare, University of Minnesota, has made a scientific study of anger in young children–what are the immediate causes of outbursts, what are the underlying causes, what methods are commonly used to suppress it, and what […]
- Humans
Moon Trees
In 1971, astronaut Stuart Roosa brought hundreds of tree seeds with him on the Apollo 14 flight to the moon. Known as “moon trees,” the resulting seedlings were planted throughout the United States and elsewhere. This Web site chronicles that project and documents what happened to those seedlings. Go to: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/moon_tree.html
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19191
I was shocked to read that now we need to be concerned not only with genetically modified organisms that we can see, but code-transgressing organisms that are invisible. Altering Escherichia coli in this way seems very dangerous. E. coli is found in every human intestine and has a proven ability to swap genetic material with […]
