More Stories from the March 27, 2010 issue
- Health & Medicine
‘Ministrokes’ may cause more damage than thought
A common test given to patients after the passing attacks appears to miss some cognitive impairments.
- Ecosystems
Sea of plastics
Oceanographers are finding more patches of floating polymers, some up to 20 meters deep.
- Chemistry
Naming an atomic heavyweight
More than a decade after its debut in a German lab, element 112 is officially named copernicium.
- Health & Medicine
Coffee associated with lower stroke risk
Study finds java drinkers 71 percent as likely to have had stroke as nondrinkers.
- Health & Medicine
U.S. women still have higher stroke incidence than men
Research suggests possible link to abdominal fat.
- Humans
Facebook users keep it real in online profiles
College students on Facebook display their real personalities, not reinvented selves, a new study suggests.
- Archaeology
Stone Age engraving traditions appear on ostrich eggshells
Fragments indicate symbolic communication on 60,000-year-old water containers.
- Humans
Titanic study: It takes time to do the right thing
Comparing the Titanic and Lusitania disasters suggests that people in a crisis are more likely to maintain social norms if they have longer to react.
- Paleontology
Ancient DNA suggests polar bears evolved recently
A study of a rare Norwegian fossil narrows down when polar bears evolved and finds they are closely related to modern-day brown bears in Alaska.
- Life
Rise of female weaponry driven by poop fights
Motherly fights for excrement in one species of dung beetle have favored the evolution of a special female horn.
- Space
Geophysicists push age of Earth’s magnetic field back 250 million years
South African rocks suggest that the earliest stages of life on Earth were protected from harmful solar radiation.
- Life
Researchers distinguish two different types of blood stem cells
Working in mice, scientists find that red and white blood cells arise from different progenitors.
- Life
Mature females key to beluga sturgeon survival
Hatchery fish are unlikely to restore caviar-producing fish populations, a new assessment finds.
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Science Past from the issue of March 26, 1960
HIDDEN WATER TRACED BY BOMB FALLOUT IN RAIN — Radioactive fallout from atom bomb tests can be used to seek out and “expose” new sources of drinking water that lie hidden deep in the earth…. Raindrops have an affinity for absorbing minute particles of tritium from the fallout left in the atmosphere after nuclear bomb […]
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Nature’s Chemicals: The Natural Products that Shaped Our World by Richard Firn
A biologist explores useful compounds made by plants and microbes. Oxford Univ. Press, 2010, 250 p., $65. NATURE’S CHEMICALS: THE NATURAL PRODUCTS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD BY RICHARD FIRN
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Eternity Soup: Inside the Quest to End Aging by Greg Critser
An aging society has spurred academics and entrepreneurs to study getting old and what could or should be done to stop it. Harmony Books, 2010, 234 p., $26. ETERNITY SOUP: INSIDE THE QUEST TO END AGING BY GREG CRITSER
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The Warcraft Civilization: Social Science in a Virtual World by William Sims Bainbridge
Studying players in the computer game World of Warcraft can explain real-world group behavior, a sociologist argues. MIT Press, 2010, 244 p., $27.95. THE WARCRAFT CIVILIZATION: SOCIAL SCIENCE IN A VIRTUAL WORLD BY WILLIAM SIMS BAINBRIDGE
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Flatland: An Edition with Notes and Commentary
by Edwin A. Abbott, notes by William F. Lindgren and Thomas F. Banchoff.
- Science & Society
Book Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
In her new book, science writer Rebecca Skloot describes how Henrietta Lacks' cells changed the face of modern medical science.
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Book Review: Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche by Ethan Watters
Review by Bruce Bower.
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Contemplating future plans for particle colliders
Caltech physicist Barry Barish is the director of the global design effort for the International Linear Collider, which is currently in the planning stages. If built, the ILC would smash together electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, at nearly the speed of light. The ILC would complement the Large Hadron Collider, a European proton collider […]
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In Pursuit of the Briefest Beat
Attosecond pulses of light could open electrons’ fast-paced world.
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Stomach’s Sweet Tooth
Turns out taste is not just for the tongue.
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Letters
Ancient graffiti Regarding “Graffiti on the walls in Pompeii” (SN: 01/30/10, p. 14), I remember reading some years ago about graffiti being discovered in Pompeii. There was even a symbol that researchers interpreted as a sort of “Kilroy was here.” Is this an ongoing study? New sites? I wonder if there were other markings, such […]
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Science Future for March 27, 2010
April 23 Celebrate National DNA Day through a webchat with NIH researchers. Go to www.genome.gov/10506367 April 26 – 30 Scientists and engineers meet in Nottingham, England, to discuss the science of quantum dots. See www.qd2010.org May 14 Deadline for receipt of nominations for AAAS fellows. Download forms at www.aaas.org/aboutaaas/fellows
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The Rise and Fall of the Biopsychosocial Model by S. Nassir Ghaemi
A psychiatrist criticizes the idea of psychiatric disease as a product of biological and social factors. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2010, 253 p., $50. THE RISE AND FALL OF THE BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL MODEL BY S. NASSIR GHAEMI
