Science News

All Stories by Science News

  1. Humans

    Humans

    Researchers reveal how feeling physical pain helps people ease a guilty conscience, plus more in this week's news.

  2. Science Future for February 12, 2011

    February 15Discuss controversy over nonnative species at the University of Minnesota’s natural history museum happy hour. See www.bellmuseum.org February 17Author Sam Kean regales New York City with tales of the periodic table. Go to www.nyas.org February 17Cybersecurity experts address hazards of the digital age at Chicago’s Northwestern University. See http://c2st.org

  3. Science Past for February 11, 1961

    RELIEVE ARTHRITIC JOINTS — Chronically inflamed arthritic joints can be relieved, but not cured, by injecting cortisone-related steroids, or hormone drugs, directly into the joint. Repeated injections, up to 142 times in one case, had no apparently harmful effect, three doctors report in the Bulletin of Rheumatic Diseases, Jan., 1961. Some 4,000 patients at the […]

  4. Letters

    Quantum quirkinessYour special issue on quantum weirdness (SN: 11/20/10, p. 15) was certainly the best presentation I have ever seen. You folks are geniuses and what you did was little short of incredible. It will be difficult (probably impossible) to top it, but keep up the good work. As an aside, could you include more […]

  5. Book Review: North Pole, South Pole: The Epic Quest to Solve the Great Mystery of Earth’s Magnetism by Gillian Turner

    Review by Sid Perkins.

  6. The Great White Bear: A Natural and Unnatural History of the Polar Bear by Kieran Mulvaney

    Starting with the fact that polar bears have black skin, this book offers surprises and up-to-date information about the Arctic’s iconic top predator. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, 251 p., $26.

  7. Geographies of Mars: Seeing and Knowing the Red Planet by K. Maria D. Lane

    Explore Mars as scientists and the public saw it around the beginning of the 20th century, when canals on the Red Planet seemed a very real possibility. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2010, 265 p., $45.

  8. Science Future for January 29, 2011

    February 11 – 13 Explore geology at the 60th Annual Agate and Mineral Show at Portland, Oregon’s science museum. See www.omsi.edu February 13 Boston’s Museum of Science officially reopens its planetarium with a show about exoplanets. Go to www.mos.org February 14 Savor a “miracle fruit” berry that deceives taste buds, in a butterfly rain forest […]

  9. Science Past from the issue of January 28, 1961

    SEE ATOMIC WASTE USE IN SALT WATER CONVERSION — Radioactive waste products from atomic plants may soon be a source of energy for converting salt water to fresh water. This use could help solve the problem of disposing of highly radioactive material, and also help combat the growing water shortage in the United States…. The […]

  10. Book Review: Massive: The Missing Particle That Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science by Ian Sample

    Review by Marissa Cevallos.

  11. Hidden Harmonies: The Lives and Times of the Pythagorean Theorem by Robert and Ellen Kaplan

    Inspired by their Harvard-based math program, two educators delve into the history and uses of the Pythagorean theorem. HIDDEN HARMONIES: THE LIVES AND TIMES OF THE PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM BY ROBERT AND ELLEN KAPLAN Bloomsbury Press, 2011, 304 p., $25.

  12. Mysteries of the Komodo Dragon: The Biggest, Deadliest Lizard Gives Up Its Secrets by Marty Crump

    For kids 9 to 11 who like all the gory details, this children’s book doesn’t shy away from showing dragons at their fiercest. MYSTERIES OF THE KOMODO DRAGON: THE BIGGEST, DEADLIEST LIZARD GIVES UP ITS SECRETS BY MARTY CRUMP Boyds Mills Press, 2010, 40 p., $18.95.