Science News

All Stories by Science News

  1. Math

    Tom Siegfried, Randomness

    For what you want to know, Bayes offers superior stats.

  2. Math

    Julie Rehmeyer, Math trek

    Turning numbers into shapes offers potential medical benefits.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Highlights from the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting

    Stress and motherhood, tandem MRIs, the memory benefits of resveratrol and more from the organization's meeting November 12-16 in Washington, D.C.

  4. Space

    Atom & Cosmos

    An asteroid's star turn, a 520-day mission to nowhere and the brightest millisecond pulsar ever.

  5. Cornell project brings peregrines back to the eastern United States

    With a little help, peregrine falcons make a comeback from the devastating effects of DDT.

  6. Letters

    Defining the human species Having read “Humans benefited by interbreeding” (SN: 10/8/11, p. 13), I wonder if I have missed what, to me, seems a major change in the definition of “species.” I was taught that the attempted crossbreeding of animals of two different species could result in either no offspring or sterile offspring. If […]

  7. SN Online

    LIFE Cycads, often called “dinosaur plants,” aren’t so ancient after all. Read “Cycads not ‘living fossils.’ “ HUMANS Ancient cooking pots show diets shifted slowly from fishing to agriculture. See “Early farmers’ fishy menu.“ ON THE SCENE BLOG The Drake Equation for tallying alien life turns 50. See “The Drake Equation: All in the family,” […]

  8. Science Future for November 19, 2011

    November 22Learn cocktail chemistry at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Go to www.hmns.org December 1Explore all things that glow at San Francisco’s Exploratorium. Ages 18 and up. See www.exploratorium.edu/afterdark December 5Make folded structures in a workshop at St. Paul’s Science Museum of Minnesota. See www.smm.org/librarylaboratory

  9. Science Past from the issue of November 18, 1961

    NEW EVIDENCE FOUND OF EXPANDING UNIVERSE — The universe is expanding, then collapsing again after a long time, evidence from photographs taken with the 200-inch telescope atop Mt. Palomar indicate. Dr. William A. Baum of Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories, Pasadena, Calif., said that present-day observations are not compatible with a steady-state universe in which […]

  10. Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech (Synthesis) by Sally Smith Hughes

    A genetic engineering company’s meteoric rise illustrates the development of the biotech industry. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2011, 213 p., $25

  11. Better than Human: The Promise and Perils of Enhancing Ourselves (Philosophy in Action) by Allen Buchanan

    A philosopher examines biomedical enhancement — from improving memory to increasing stamina — and approaches to its future applications. Oxford Univ. Press, 2011, 199 p., $21.95

  12. Fascinating Mathematical People: Interviews and Memoirs, Donald J. Albers and Gerald L. Alexanderson, eds.

    Interviews reveal people who have shaped mathematics, like “mathemagician” Arthur Benjamin and Harold Bacon, who taught calculus to an Alcatraz prisoner. Princeton Univ. Press, 2011, 328 p., $35