Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication articles from December 2006

Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication archives from December 2006

Sci-triv game: have fun learning about science!
December 1, 2006... Want to play a game of science trivia? See how many points you can win by correctly answering the questions below. To find your score, give yourself 10 points each time you get the first question right, 20 points for each second question,...

Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo.(okapi's foot mark discovered)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of the Congo--You would never forget an okapi if you saw one. The rare mammal looks like a horse wearing striped pants and white knee socks. The last sighting of an okapi in Africa's Virunga...

System overload: doing homework while reading e-mail and IMing friends makes better use of your brain, right? Wrong.(LIFE)
December 1, 2006... Thirteen-year-old Alex Denk of Maplewood, N.J., does a lot of his homework while catching up on TV sports news. And while talking to friends, he listens to music on his MP3 player with an earbud in one ear. His friends don't mind. They usually...

Wipe out: what caused the worst mass extinction in history?(EARTH/LIFE)
December 1, 2006... A little more than 250 million years ago--20 million years before dinosaurs made their first appearance--saber-toothed reptiles called gorgonopsids ruled the land. The oceans teemed with creatures called ammonoids that looked like squids in...

Winds of war: a veteran of the war in Iraq believes that breathing uranium dust made him sick.(Herbert Reed)
December 1, 2006... Herbert Reed used to run 2 to 5 miles a day and hoist 250-pound barbells. But ever since his 30-day stint manning a prison in Iraq three years ago, Reed has struggled to walk half a block. "I can't do anything," Reed, 52, says. "Some days, I...

Mobile station: will a simple reaction let cars make their own fuel from water?(hydrogen fuels)
December 1, 2006... In September, Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) passed a milestone on the route to clean energy. It announced that next year it will start leasing the world's first cars that run on hydrogen. Often called "the fuel of the future," hydrogen is...

Discoveries.
December 1, 2006... SKILLBUILDERS Fill in the Blanks Write the word or words that best complete each sentence. 1. An -- planet is a planet that exists outside the solar system. 2. Antibiotics are drugs administered to treat diseases caused by --...

Maine says no to drugs.(antibiotics banned)
December 1, 2006... AUGUSTA, Maine -- Maine's state motto is Dirigo, Latin for "I lead." It comes as no surprise, then, that Maine recently became the first state to discourage the purchase of meat from animals fed antibiotics. Antibiotics are drugs that kill...

Galaxy may have many exoEarths.
December 1, 2006... BOULDER, Colo. -- In its October 6 issue, Current Science reported on an upcoming generation of telescopes designed to see Earth-sized planets beyond our solar system. Now a team of U.S. researchers suggests that the telescopes may find dozens...

Screens beam personal messages.(BluScreen being developed by University of Southampton)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... SOUTHAMPTON, England -- if you saw the sci-fi thriller Minority Report, you might remember the scene where the Tom Cruise character enters a shopping concourse lined with jumbo video screens. Cruise is bombarded by three-dimensional commercials...

Male-female fish found in river.(intersex fish found in potomac river)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Something fishy is going on in the nation's capital. An abnormal number of intersex fish have turned up in the city's Potomac River. Intersex animals have both male and female traits. The discovery surprised scientists...

B.O. KO's pesky ants.(too weird)(Argentine ants)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... IRVINE, Calif. -- It's not a pretty sight when a group of Argentine ants encounters an ant of another species. Rushing the other ant like players on a football squad, the Argentines grab hold of the foreigner's legs and pull the insect apart....

Mystery photos.(Optricks)
December 1, 2006... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Answers Top: pins Middle: bottles embedded in a wall Bottom: rivet in jeans

Whatizit?
December 1, 2006... You may not recognize this material, shown in extreme close-up, but you probably depend on it almost every school day. It is a mixture of water and clay plus an allotrope of carbon and goes by the name of another chemical element. Answers...

Bend your mind.(Optricks)
December 1, 2006... Transform this hexagon into a cube by drawing three extra lines. Answers [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Sci-TRIV game: have fun learning about science!
December 15, 2006... Want to play a game of science trivia? See how many points you can win by correctly answering the questions below. To find your score, give yourself 10 points each time you get the first question right, 20 points for each second question, and...

Who knew?(snakes in house)(Brief article)
December 15, 2006... WILFORD, Idaho -- You've heard of Snakes on a Plane, but how about Snakes on a Brain? That's what happened to Lyman Hepworth while inspecting the new home he bought last winter. When he opened a door in the house, snakes fell on his head. Then,...

Good-bye world? Will a new machine create black holes that swallow earth?
December 15, 2006... You've heard of a black hole, right? It's an object in space that forms when the gravity of a star overwhelms the star and the whole thing collapses. Black holes are black because their gravity is so strong that virtually nothing escapes...

Weight room: our reporter rode a machine made to keep astronauts fit in space.
December 15, 2006... Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! I've ridden many carnival rides in my life, but nothing this exciting. I'm in a small cage that's flying around a room 40 times a minute. The cage's position is more horizontal than vertical. When I look down,...

Blow out: a mud volcano in Indonesia has inundated thousands of homes and seems to be unstoppable.
December 15, 2006... In late September, police on the island of Java in Indonesia were given orders to shoot "anarchists" on sight. What had gotten the anarchists in trouble with the law? A terrorist plot? No. A mud volcano. Since May, a crack in the ground in East...

Monster mash: you think human-animal beasts are only a myth? Think again.
December 15, 2006... In January, U.S. President George W. Bush used his State of the Union speech to condemn science that he said "cut[s] ethical corners." In his remarks, the president asked Congress "to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of...

Devil-guts plant smells victims.(dodder vine)(Brief article)
December 15, 2006... UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Many plants smell, but the dodder vine smells. It sniffs the air for odors that waft from other plants. When the vine senses the right odor, it wraps itself around the plant and sucks out the plant's insides. "It's...

A snorkeler marvels at a floating troop of jellyfish in the pearly green waters of Jellyfish Lake on Palau, an island nation in the Pacific Ocean.
December 15, 2006... A snorkeler marvels at a floating troop of jellyfish in the pearly green waters of Jellyfish Lake on Palau, an island nation in the Pacific Ocean. Ten million jellies inhabit the saltwater lake, their bodies pulsing in and out like dancers in...

Oldest child found.(fossilized skull)
December 15, 2006... DIKIKA, Ethiopia -- Six years ago this month, fossil hunter Tilahun Gebreselassie was climbing a steep hillside in the badlands of Ethiopia. Looking intently at the ground, Gebreselassie was struck by what seemed to be a face looking back at...

'Jupiters' have hot feet.(Brief article)
December 15, 2006... BALTIMORE -- The last issue of Current Science reported on the existence of "hot Jupiters." These are gas giants like Jupiter that lie elsewhere in the galaxy and orbit so close to their parent stars that their surface temperatures exceed 540...

Dino cleared of cannabalism?
December 15, 2006... NEW YORK CITY -- Fossil hunters are used to making discoveries underground, but not where Sterling Nesbitt made his--in the New York City subway system. Nesbitt is a student in paleontology at Columbia University and the American Museum of...

Pocket bike hits the road.(Brief article)
December 15, 2006... LONDON -- Sir Clive Sinclair gained fame and fortune in his native England for inventing the pocket calculator. Thirty-five years later, Sinclair is still inventing, and his newest creation is a pocket bicycle. Unveiled in July, the bike...

Bend your mind.(Brief article)
December 15, 2006... Clara was born in the middle Of winter in 1986. In April 2006 she was 19 years old. How is that possible? ANSWERS Clara was born in a country in the Southern Hemisphere, such as Chile or Australia, where winter falls in the months of...

Whatizit?(mosquitoes)(Brief article)
December 15, 2006... No, these aren't Ruffles potato chips. They're animal scales, though not the kind you'd see on a snake. They're too small to be observed with the naked eye. They're found on the bodies of members of the family Culicidae, the worst transmitters...

Mystery photos.(Optricks)
December 15, 2006... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ANSWERS Top: a book of matches Middle: a quarter (25 cents) Bottom: a lightbulb, seen from the bottom