Humans
- Humans
Sing a Song of Science
These children’s tunes, produced in the late ’50s and early ’60s have a certain nostalgic innocence. At least some are traditional tunes given new expository lyrics. They deal with astronomy (like the “Constellation Jig”), energy (“Ultra Violet and Infra Red”), experimentation (“Vibration”), weather (“Warm Fronts, Cold Fronts”), and nature (“What Is a Mammal?” and “How […]
By Science News - Earth
A New Would-Be Hormone in Water
Nitrate, a common pollutant, may also perturb reproductive hormones—at least in frogs.
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Mouse, Heal Thyself: Therapeutic cloning from a mouse’s own cells
Mice with a Parkinson's disease–like condition benefited from receiving new nerve cells made through therapeutic cloning of their own cells.
- Health & Medicine
Still Waters: Skin disease microbe tracked to ponds, swamps
Scientists establish pond water as the natural environment of Mycobacterium ulcerans, the cause of the skin disease Buruli ulcer.
By Nathan Seppa - Anthropology
European Roots: Human ancestors go back in time in Spanish cave
Excavations of a cave in northern Spain have yielded a fossil jaw and tooth that provide the first solid evidence that human ancestors reached Western Europe more than 1 million years ago.
By Bruce Bower - Anthropology
A hip stance by an ancient ancestor
By 6 million years ago, upright human ancestors had evolved a hip design that remained stable for perhaps the next 4 million years, until the appearance of hip modifications in Homo erectus.
By Bruce Bower - Health & Medicine
Strong support for a basic diet
The alkalinity of diets rich in potassium—usually a reflection of heavy fruit and vegetable consumption—helps preserve muscle.
By Janet Raloff - Humans
What’s Cookin’
Science and cooking have gotten intimate, resulting in a new understanding of how molecules are transformed into food and how food is transformed by the body.
- Humans
Letters from the March 29, 2008, issue of Science News
Why switch to grass? Regarding “Switchgrass may yield biofuel bounty” (SN: 1/19/08, p. 46): Distilleries have been around since the dawn of time, including barleycorn (whiskey), maize (whiskey), potatoes (vodka), sugarcane (rum), and arcane brews distilled from beets, bread crumbs, and bamboo. The ethanol molecule cares not one wit about its particular provenance, so what […]
By Science News - Humans
Getting Facts Straight . . . or the Sarah Woolley Chronicles
Sometimes we run afoul through the best of intentions.
By Janet Raloff - Humans
A Growing Doctor Shortage
The older we get, the fewer doctors there are to attend to our frailties.
By Janet Raloff - Humans
From the March 19, 1938, issue
A unique, parabolic motion picture, an aircraft pioneer contemplates the future of flight, and a formula to link large and small.
By Science News