All Stories by Science News
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18908
In the March 17 issue, there was an article about arsenic pollution disrupting hormone activity (“Arsenic pollution disrupts hormones”) and another article concerned with satellite verification of greenhouse-gas effects from increased levels of carbon dioxide and methane (“Satellites verify greenhouse-gas effects”). Ironically, that same week, President Bush recommended that more stringent arsenic standards be set […]
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18910
In the March 17 issue, there was an article about arsenic pollution disrupting hormone activity (“Arsenic pollution disrupts hormones”) and another article concerned with satellite verification of greenhouse-gas effects from increased levels of carbon dioxide and methane (“Satellites verify greenhouse-gas effects”). Ironically, that same week, President Bush recommended that more stringent arsenic standards be set […]
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Urchins of the Seas
If you haven’t really been paying attention for the last 450 million years or so of Earth’s history, London’s Natural History Museum offers a tidy way to catch up with a diverse, venerable group of marine invertebrates known as echinoids. Spectacular color images highlight important distinguishing characteristics of each type of sea urchin. Find out […]
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18909
As a university earth science professor, I view my son’s middle and high school science texts with horror. I see similar symptoms in the behavior of some of my undergraduate students. I view the problem as being an educational system in which, through high school, teachers are trained how to teach but not what. College […]
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18907
About the Hippocratic Oath, as quoted in “I do solemnly swear . . .,” “first, do not harm” is not in it, although it has been said so dozens of times. Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary‘s version of the oath states “. . . never do harm to anyone.” “First, do no harm” (Primum non nocere) […]
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18906
As an old noncentenarian, I was getting along very well with “Making sense of centenarians” until I reached Thomas Perls’ remark: “My hope is that we will actually see the development [from genetic research] of medications . . . .” I will bet your great-grandmother survived very well with the least medication possible. It seems […]
- Physics
Jiggling the Cosmic Ooze
Spurred by the first tentative sightings after a decades-old search, physicists seeking the universe's mass-giving particle — the Higgs boson — have fired up the world's highest-energy particle collider to join the pursuit.
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18905
“Jiggling the cosmic ooze” states that Leon Lederman won the Nobel prize in 1988 for “codiscovering the muon.” It is a small error, but more correctly, Lederman won the Nobel prize for codiscovering the mu neutrino. The muon was discovered in cosmic rays in 1937–1938 by researchers using cloud-chamber techniques. Peter B. Kahn State University […]
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18904
In regards to “Dinosaur fossil yields feathery structures,” the scattered feathery structures may have belonged to an antecedent of Archaeopteryx but not necessarily a Sinornithosaurus. Given the context and location of the fossils, it seems more likely they belonged to the raptor’s last meal before its untimely demise. Aaron Stough Roanoke, Va.
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18903
One can question the basic assumptions of the people doing the study described in “Sedentary off-hours link to Alzheimer’s.” One would hope that going to church is not less an intellectual endeavor than others, though it may be less physical than knitting or gardening. Even TV can be intellectual if viewers are testing their ability […]
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From the March 7, 1931, issue
CANYON DE CHELLY NOW NATIONAL MONUMENT A famous canyon of the West, with ancient Indian ruins under the shelter of its thousand-foot red walls, has been given the status of a National Monument, by an act of Congress recently signed by the President. This is the Canyon de Chelly in Arizona, with its tributaries, Canyon […]
- Tech
Flying Leap
In the history of human flight, first came the daring tinkerers who gave wings to the pent-up human desire to soar. In the wake of their successes came a remarkable proliferation of flying machines, spacecraft, and colorful characters. At this Web site, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics celebrates these achievements with an annotated […]
