Science News for Kids articles from March 2008

Science News for Kids archives from March 2008

A 'book' on every living thing.(Encyclopedia of Life - www.eol.org)
March 5, 2008... Fish that weigh more than a refrigerator. Fish with glowing slime. Fish that look like cows--or at least did to the folks who named them cowfish (and these creatures do have long faces). Some very odd creatures swim through the world's...

Deep krill.
March 5, 2008... A little over a year ago, scientists lowered a camera to the bottom of the Southern Ocean off the coast of Antarctica. The video images from that camera surprised them. Three thousand meters (9,800 feet) below the surface of the sea, the...

Hair detectives.(forensic research on human hair)
March 5, 2008... You can tell a lot about people by looking at their hair--and not just whether they brush, spray, or blow-dry. Scientists have found a way to use hair to figure out where a person is from and where that person has been. The finding could...

Cell phone tattlers.
March 12, 2008... Your cell phone holds secrets about you. Besides the names and numbers that you've programmed into it, traces of your DNA linger on the device, according to a new study. DNA is genetic material that appears in every cell. Like your...

Deep history.(Grand Canyon)
March 12, 2008... The Grand Canyon is one of nature's most majestic and impressive places. The gorge is enormous, measuring 277 miles (446 kilometers) long and up to a mile (1.6 km) deep in some places. The Colorado River runs through the middle of it. But how...

When fungi and algae marry.(lichens)
March 12, 2008... Lichens (li' kenz) are easy to ignore. They can be microscopically small. They don't move. And they often blend into the background. You might not even recognize one if you were staring right at it. Chances are, though, you've come...

How super are superfruits?
March 19, 2008... You've probably been told a million times to eat your fruits and vegetables. If you live in the United States, that recommendation probably makes you think of apples, bananas, carrots, and broccoli. It can be boring to eat the same produce day...

Music in the brain.
March 19, 2008... Music inspires many people, including scientists. For instance, two researchers recently looked at the brains of jazz musicians. They were interested in what happened when musical performers spontaneously invent musical passages. Making up...

Ready, set, supernova.
March 19, 2008... Stars explode all the time in outer space, but astronomers usually see the explosions only after they've happened. One type of stellar explosion, called a supernova, can glow for days or even months. Now, for the first time, scientists have...

Animal CSI or from science lab to crime lab.
March 26, 2008... Robbery, vandalism, murder: Crimes happen every day. But people aren't the only victims of illegal activity. Bad guys can also target animals. And since animals can't tell police officers what they've seen, these are some of the toughest cases...

Diving, rolling, and floating, alligator style.
March 26, 2008... Try to wrestle an alligator underwater, and you'll probably lose. It's not just that the average gator--at 11 feet long and close to 1,000 pounds--is a whole lot bigger than you are. It turns out alligators have a secret weapon when it comes to...

Mind-reading machine.
March 26, 2008... Winning at "I spy" would be a whole lot easier if there were just some way to know what your opponent was looking at. It's not too far-fetched an idea. A team of researchers in California has developed a way to predict what kinds of objects...