Science News for Kids articles from January 2006

Science News for Kids archives from January 2006

Flu patrol.
January 4, 2006... Each winter, the flu makes its rounds, jumping from victim to victim at schools and in offices. Miserable kids and adults stay at home in bed or go to the hospital with fevers, sniffles, sore throats, muscle aches, and coughs. Just as the...

From mammoth to modern elephant.
January 4, 2006... Thousands of years ago, an elephant-like creature called the woolly mammoth roamed Earth. Except for fossilized bones and remains found trapped in ice, it's now gone. Scientists have long wondered whether the extinct mammoth is more closely...

Young ants in the kitchen.
January 4, 2006... Holiday dinners can be a major affair. Someone has to cook the turkey, bake the potatoes, chop and steam the vegetables, stir the soup, mix ingredients for the pie, and more. Then, the chef has to sit down and wait until everyone is served...

Hear, hear.
January 11, 2006... Birds chirping. Waves crashing. Friends laughing. Teachers talking. Sounds are a big part of life for people who can hear. But you probably don't spend much time thinking about what goes on inside your ears--or about how loud sounds might...

Stone age sole survivors.
January 11, 2006... The people who walked on a muddy lakeshore in southeastern Australia surely never suspected that their footprints would stick around for 20,000 years. Yet, at least 124 of their prints still exist, say a group of scientists who uncovered...

A moon's icy spray.(Brief article)
January 11, 2006... At Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, geysers such as the famous Old Faithful regularly spout water hundreds of feet into the air. The jets are impressive, but they're nothing compared to geysers on one of Saturn's moons. The tiny moon,...

Snowflakes and avalanches.
January 18, 2006... High on a mountainside, ski patroller Karl Birkeland dug a pit into a drift to check the snow's stability. He declared the slope safe for skiing. The danger of an avalanche appeared low. It was 1985, and Birkeland was out with friends near...

Plant gas.
January 18, 2006... You may have never heard of methane, but there's a lot of it out there. Cows emit the gas, which is produced by bacteria in their stomachs. Methane also wafts up from the wet soils in swamps and rice paddies, where methane-producing microbes...

Professor Ant.
January 18, 2006... If you haven't appreciated your teachers lately, now might be a good time to reflect on all that they do for you. Good teachers already know the information that they're teaching, but they slow down to explain it to you. With their help,...

A whale's amazing tooth.
January 25, 2006... The narwhal looks as if it belongs in a fairy tale. Or maybe a myth. This unusual whale has a long, straight tooth, or tusk, that resembles the horn of a unicorn. Most male and some female narwhals have such a tusk. It sticks out from the...

Early maya writing.
January 25, 2006... More than 2,000 years ago, a Maya scribe painted a pattern of thick black lines on a pyramid wall. Over centuries, these hieroglyphs disappeared from view as people took apart the wall and built bigger pyramids on top of the original structure....

Polly shouldn't get a cracker.
January 25, 2006... It's a boy! That's the sort of news that biologists working to save endangered kakapo parrots in New Zealand probably aren't happy to hear all the time. The population of kakapo parrots currently numbers about 86 birds. Scientists have...