Science News for Kids articles from February 2006

Science News for Kids archives from February 2006

Mother-of-pearl on ice.
February 1, 2006... Pearls are some of the more beautiful examples of nature's strength. The gemstones grow inside oysters, and they are remarkably sturdy and tough. Now, scientists have found a way to copy what oysters have been doing all along. They've made...

Red apes in danger.
February 1, 2006... Orangutans are large, hairy, apes that spend a lot of time alone and high up in trees. They're fun to watch in zoos because they use their long arms to swing from tree branch to tree branch. In the wild, orangutans are in big trouble. In...

Spit power.
February 1, 2006... Mahvash Navazesh has dedicated 25 years of her life to the study of spit. "My nickname is 'Spit Queen,'" says Navazesh, who teaches at the University of Southern California School of Dentistry in Los Angeles. She can joke about her work,...

Eating troubles.
February 8, 2006... We all have to eat, but choosing the right foods can be hard. Many people also have trouble controlling how much they eat. Instead of eating reasonable portions of fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and other healthy foods, lots of people eat...

Poor devils.
February 8, 2006... The real Tasmanian devil doesn't look much like the familiar snarling and whirling cartoon character known as Taz, but it's every bit as fierce. When European settlers arrived on the Australian island of Tasmania and met the small...

Warmest year on record.(Brief article)
February 8, 2006... You've probably heard about global warming--the heating up of Earth's atmosphere due to the buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. New analyses show just how warm the world is getting. The year 2005 was the hottest ever...

A dino king's ancestor.(Guanlong wucaii fossils, ancestor of the tyrannosaurus rex, found )(Brief article)
February 15, 2006... Tyrannosaurus rex gets a lot of attention for being one of the fiercest large dinosaurs that ever lived. These fearsome meat eaters, however, weren't the first of their kind. In northwestern China, paleontologists have found remains of...

Beyond bar codes.(RFID tags)
February 15, 2006... In the future, your refrigerator might alert you when the milk has gone sour. At the grocery store, cashiers won't need to scan bar codes because products will provide the data on their own. And packages and letters will carry electronic tags...

Capturing the stuff of space.
February 15, 2006... Comet dust and the remains of exploded stars hurtled into Earth's atmosphere and landed safely in the Utah desert last month. The material arrived inside a capsule ejected by the Stardust spacecraft. Scientists are now teasing out tiny...

Killer flatworms hunt with poison.
February 22, 2006... Five years ago, marine biologist Raphael Ritson-Williams was collecting flatworms in the waters around the Pacific island of Guam, when he found a new species. He put the oval, filmy, yellow flatworm in a container for further study. On...

Programming with Alice.
February 22, 2006... Shriveled, slithery, and wily, Gollum is one of the more memorable characters in the Lord of the Rings movies. But it took computers to bring Gollum to life, creating animated images of the character that smoothly blend with the actors on the...

Sizing up Pluto's moon.(Brief article)
February 22, 2006... Pluto's moon Charon recently took a trip on the dark side. On July 10, 2005, the moon passed in front of a star, briefly blocking the star's light. This brief blockage, however, was long enough to give astronomers new information about Pluto's...