6,745 results
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Down the Tubes: Amino acid proves key to plant reproduction
An amino acid that human brain cells communicate with also has a role in plant sex.
- Health & Medicine
Telltale Charts
Overturning a basic tenet of conventional wisdom in cardiology, new research suggests that more than half the people who develop heart disease first show one of the warning signs of smoking, having diabetes, or having high blood pressure or cholesterol.
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19155
I think it’s more than coincidental that the sound repertoire of babbling babies, compared with the speech sounds in a diversity of languages across the world, lends credence to the idea that there was a mother tongue that goes back to prehistoric times. Readers of the Bible will recall that it was after the fall […]
- Humans
From the June 24, 1933, issue
LIGHTNING Lightning, most awesome of the spectacular forces of nature, has yielded some of its mystery to science. But not all. We no longer credit it, as did our ancestors, to an angry Zeus or an impetuous Thor. Since Ben Franklin flew his adventurous kites, nearly two centuries ago, we know it is “made of […]
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What’s Worth Saving?
A fracas over a biological term could have huge consequences for conservation.
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Promiscuity in guppies has its virtues
Mating with multiple partners benefits the female Trinidadian guppy and her offspring by reducing gestation time and producing youngsters more adept at forming protective schools and at evading capture.
- Health & Medicine
Oh Boy—Is Mom Hungry!
At birth, boys tend to weigh about 100 grams (3.5 ounces) more than girls. An international research team wondered whether that meant that boys’ moms ate more during pregnancy. In data published this week, the scientists now confirm that’s exactly what happens. Though women eat more when carrying a boy, they don’t gain more weight […]
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Predators shape river world top-down
Hunting and no-hunting zones allow a rare test of the much-debated proposal that big carnivores shape their ecosystems from the top down.
- Agriculture
Calling All Cows
Last May, tissues from the carcass of a North American cow turned up positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy–the ailment responsible for mad cow disease. Within hours, the Canadian government traced the animal to the Alberta farm where it had been raised for its 8 years of life. In short order, other members of its herd […]
- Humans
Undignified Science
Research advances in 2003 heralded a string of unexpected scientific indignities that will occur in the future, at least in the fevered imagination of one writer.
- Humans
Undignified Science
Research advances in 2003 heralded a string of unexpected scientific indignities that will occur in the future, at least in the fevered imagination of one writer.
- Humans
From the July 8, 1933, issue
THE NYMPHS’ FLOWER Serene, cool, immaculate, the water lily floats beneath the summer sun, where the big flat drops of water shine like silver coins on the round, flat leaves. The water lily has been the delight of poets of all ages and peoples. Of moralists, too, who like to reflect that all that superb […]
