521 results
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- Animals
West Nile virus hits bird populations
West Nile virus has hammered populations of five common North American birds.
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Rather than concluding that the object that hit Canada 12,900 years ago was a comet, I wonder whether there might not be an alternate reason that geologists haven’t discovered a large hole. If a meteor hit a kilometer-thick glacier, would it have left a crater in the rock underneath the ice? Peter ShorWellesley, Mass. Scientists […]
- Humans
Letters from the August 18, 2007, issue of Science News
Exhaustive analysis I would debate the “1,000 watts or more” value attributed to typical adults during strenuous exercise (“Powering the Revolution: Tiny gadgets pick up energy for free,” SN: 6/2/07, p. 344). Hiking up steep slopes, I rarely exceed 250 W myself, and typical hikers are going much slower. The 1,000-watt figure can only apply […]
- Math
Geometry in Court
The Pythagorean theorem and geometric series played leading roles in two legal disputes.
- Health & Medicine
Wasting Away: Prozac loses promise as anorexia nervosa fighter
Although often prescribed for people with anorexia nervosa, the popular antidepressant medication Prozac offers no better protection against the potentially fatal eating disorder than placebo pills do.
- Animals
Jay Watch: Birds get sneakier when spies lurk
A scrub jay storing food takes note of any other jay that watches it and later defends the hoard accordingly.
- Animals
Crow Tools: Hatched to putter
The New Caledonian crow is the first vertebrate to be shown definitively to have an innate tendency to make and use tools, according to researchers who doubled as bird nannies.
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- Animals
Owls use tools: Dung is lure for beetles
Burrowing owls' habit of bringing mammal dung to their burrows attracts edible beetles and counts as form of tool use.
- Health & Medicine
Virus might explain respiratory ailments
Human metapneumovirus, first isolated in 2001, is present in many respiratory infections that had previously gone unexplained.
- Humans
From the October 13, 1934, issue
A wingless rooster, production of artificial radioactive elements, and novae proposed as the origin of cosmic rays.
