773 results
- Humans
Rare animals get U.N. protection
Several types of whales, river dolphins, the great white shark, and an unusual camel are among animals designated to receive new or heightened protection under a United Nations treaty.
- Earth
Catch Zero
It generally has taken less than a generation for modern, industrial-scale fishing, once deployed in a new plot of ocean, to exhaust the vast majority of the sea’s edible bounty and leave behind decimated ecosystems and depleted economic opportunities.
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Getting an Earful: With gene therapy, ears grow new sensory cells
Scientists have for the first time coaxed the growth of new sensory cells within the ears of an adult mammal.
- Paleontology
Mosasaurs were born at sea, not in safe harbors
Newly discovered fossils of prehistoric aquatic reptiles known as mosasaurs suggest that the creatures gave birth in midocean rather than in near-shore sanctuaries as previously suspected.
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Beast Buddies
As researchers muse about the evolutionary origins of friendship, even the social interactions of giraffes are getting a second look.
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Baby talk goes to the dogs, and cats
Acoustic differences in the "baby talk" that mothers use with their infants and with family pets support the notion that adults use this form of speech to teach language skills to their babies.
- Earth
Mercurial Effects of Fish-Rich Diets
In the spring of 2000, one of Jane M. Hightower’s patients had been concerned about hair loss, so the internist referred the woman to a specialist in her building. That dermatologist probed the woman’s medical history but could find no explanation. That is, until she suddenly recalled a radio broadcast about mercury poisoning in people […]
- Physics
Balloon bursts give clue to fast cracks
A casual observation about the edges of popped balloons may have led researchers to previously unknown features of the most common and least understood types of fractures.
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Copy Crab: DNA confirms that crab forms have several origins
New genetic evidence suggests that crabs aren't all close relatives and their characteristic shape evolved independently on numerous occasions.
- Ecosystems
State of U.S. Agro-ecosystems
About one-quarter of the United States’ land cover, excluding Alaska, is farmed–some 430 million to 500 million acres. A massive new project has just assessed this and other food-producing environments, such as coastal waters, fresh waters, and rangelands, to tally factors contributing to health. Released on Sept. 24, it indicates that most ecosystems are undergoing […]
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From the December 28, 1929, issue
YOUTH AND THE SEA “Captain Sylvia,” aged 6 weeks, and her mother, Mrs. J.E. Williamson upon the cover of this week’s issue look at a strange world full of fishes, corals, sharks, morays, and other denizens of the deep. The youthful scientist, symbolic of science itself and its aspirations, was a member of the Field […]
- Paleontology
Sea Dragons
About 235 million years ago, as the earliest dinosaurs stomped about on land, some of their reptilian relatives slipped back into the surf, took on an aquatic lifestyle, and became ichthyosaurs—Greek for fish lizards.
