1,698 results
- Animals
Strong Medicine: Over-the-counter remedy snags snakes
Acetaminophen—the active ingredient in Tylenol—vanquishes brown tree snakes, the bane of Guam.
- Tech
Coming soon: Knavish electromagnetic acts
Scientists have created a device with bizarre electromagnetic properties—but so far, only at microwave frequencies.
- Health & Medicine
Survivors’ Benefit?
Smallpox outbreaks throughout history may have endowed some people with genetic mutations that make them resistant to the AIDS virus.
-
Drugs order bacteria to commit suicide
Seeking to explain how antibiotics work, scientists find a protein that commands bacteria to kill themselves.
- Health & Medicine
Researchers find how rhubarb remedy eases cholera
Researchers in Japan have identified a natural compound responsible for the effectiveness of one rhubarb-based remedy to combat the overwhelming diarrhea that comes with cholera.
-
Breathtaking Science
A small region within the brainstem creates the normal breathing rhythm.
- Health & Medicine
Scrambled Drugs: Transgenic chickens could lay golden eggs
Scientists have created transgenic chickens able to produce foreign proteins—and, potentially, pharmaceuticals—in their eggs.
-
Spreading Consciousness
A reanalysis of brain-imaging data links conscious visual experience to activity patterns throughout the brain, challenging the popular view that specific brain areas coordinate this mental state.
- Math
Sand Drawings and Mirror Curves
To accompany the telling of a story or recounting of a fable, men of the Chokwe people in south-central Africa traditionally made sand drawings, called sona, to illustrate the tale. These highly stylized geometric illustrations also served as memory aids. Sand drawing. Paulus Gerdes Plaited mat designs. Mark Schlatter Lion’s stomach design. Mark Schlatter Example […]
- Physics
Double or Nothing
The hunt for a rare, hypothetical nuclear transformation known as neutrinoless double-beta decay may answer one of the most urgent questions in physics today: How much do elementary particles called neutrinos weigh?
-
Rediscovering the Maya
For an entertaining excursion into the language, calendar, architecture, and culture of ancient Maya society, try the “Rabbit in the Moon” Web site. You’ll also learn about the Maya myth that inspired the site’s name. Go to: http://www.halfmoon.org.
- Math
Fibonacci’s Chinese Calendar
In a book completed in the year 1202, mathematician Leonardo of Pisa (also known as Fibonacci) posed the following problem: How many pairs of rabbits will be produced in a year, beginning with a single pair, if every month each pair bears a new pair that becomes productive from the second month on? The total […]
