Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication articles from February 2003

Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication archives from February 2003

Sci-triv game.
February 7, 2003... Have fun learning about science! Want to play a game of science trivia? See how many points you can win by correctly answering the following questions. To find your score, give yourself 10 points each time you get the first question...

Yesterday once more: Current Science flashbacks.
February 7, 2003... April 15-19, 1940 -- Current Science obtained a list of the wages paid to animal actors for roles in Hollywood movies. Such wages depended on two factors: (1) the animal's intelligence and (2) the animal's rarity. Chickens were paid 25 cents a...

Red menace? How threatening might the giant twisters of Mars be to the first visitors from Earth? (Earth).
February 7, 2003... When Peter Smith was a kid growing up in Tucson Ariz., he and his friends would chase the dirty whirlwinds called dust devils that regularly spin across the nearby desert. "We used to run and stand in the dust devils," Smith told Current...

Pretty poison: Botox, the popular new age-defying drug, also has many serious medical uses. (Health).
February 7, 2003... During the taping of a recent episode of the CBS-TV soap opera The Young and the Restless, actor Susan Walters flung open a door and tried forcing her facial features into the "angry glare" that the script called for. But her forehead wouldn't...

Sweet freeze: to make delicious ice cream, you have to control the ice in the cream. (Physical).
February 7, 2003... What's your favorite ice cream? Might it be grain mustard or smoked bacon and eggs or Big Mac? All three are offered at The Fat Duck, an award-winning restaurant in Bray, England, west of London. Yum! Fat Duck owner Heston Blumenthal, one...

Testing the waters: is drug pollution harming the health of people and wildlife? (Life).
February 7, 2003... Winning an international award for water-science research at age 17 was good news for Ashley Mulroy. The results of that research were not so good for anyone concerned about the country's waterways and drinking water. Ashley had read an...

Drilling approved on turtles' nesting grounds. (Life).(company allowed to drill for gas on Padre Island National Seashore, Texas)
February 7, 2003... CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas -- Environmentalists are protesting the Bush administration's approval of the drilling of two new natural gas wells on Padre Island National Seashore, a national park on the Gulf of Mexico. The longest section of...

Hot water generates electricity. (Earth).
February 7, 2003... REYKJAVIK, Iceland -- Despite its name and location just below the Arctic Circle, Iceland has plenty of heat. Iceland is a volcanic island and the heat from the magma (molten rock) that lies underground supplies it with plenty of hot water and...

Bees to elephants: buzz off! (Life).(smell of honey used to control rogue elephants)
February 7, 2003... MPALA RESEARCH CENTRE, Kenya -- You've probably heard the myth that elephants are afraid of mice. What really scares elephants are bees. Elephants have thick skin everywhere except around the eyes, behind the ears, under the trunk, and on the...

Insight. (Discoveries).
February 7, 2003... NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope captured this spectacular image of an enormous cloud of particles surrounding the Crab pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star. The circle around the pulsar is a ring of X-rays. A...

Serenity now! New treatment found for "jimmy legs". (Health).
February 7, 2003... MADRID, Spain -- Do you remember the Seinfeld episode in which Kramer complains because his girlfriend, Emily, has "the jimmy legs"? Emily is not alone. As many as one in ten Americans are bothered by the condition, which doctors call restless...

Who knew? (Discoveries).
February 7, 2003... The brain uses anywhere from 20 to 25 percent of an adult human's energy needs. The brain of an ape uses 8 to 10 percent of the ape's energy needs. Most other mammal brains use just 3 to 5 percent of the mammal's needs. Jake, a 5-year-old...

What iz it? (Optricks).(how plants pass gas)(Illustration)
February 7, 2003... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Plants pass gas but not in the same way that people do. Gases pass in and out of a plant through pores like the one above that looks like a mouth. What is the name for this pore? a stoma on the leaf of a plant

Discoveries.("fill in the blank" quiz)
February 7, 2003... Fill in the Blank Find the word or words that best complete each sentence. Write the words in the blanks. 1. Apiculture is the keeping of --. 2. A cat is one that has many toes --. 3. -- is a painful nerve disease caused by...

Have fun learning about science! (Sci-Triv Game).
February 28, 2003... This career issue's game is about famous scientists. 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...

Lava man: volcanologist Ken Hon has one of the hottest jobs on Earth. (Earth).(Cover Story)
February 28, 2003... A trail of blazing lava spills down the side of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano. Geologist Ken Hon waves away the fumes and leans over the 2000-degree stream. Is he studying the lava's texture or mineral content? No. Hon has more important matters to...

Whale watcher: biologist Alexandra Morton has learned a language few humans know: killer whale. (Life).
February 28, 2003... As the sun sets over British Columbia's Echo Bay, seabirds circle in the pink sky. Below them, the surface of the sea begins to froth, forming a carpet of bubbles. Biologist Alexandra Morton knows how to read those signs. Small schooling fish...

Robot master: Helen Greiner's childhood crush on R2-D2 blossomed into a fabulous career in robotics. (Physical).
February 28, 2003... Ten-year-old Helen Greiner fell in love when she san the first Star Wars movie the year it opened, 1977. The character that stole her heart wasn't Han Solo or Luke Skywalker, however. It was the robot R2-D2. "He was more than a machine,"...

Smile maker: Nurse Cindi Raglin travels the world with Operation Smile, treating children with facial deformities. (Health).
February 28, 2003... In a Philippines hospital, a young girl sat in the waiting room with her hand clenched into a tight fist. As nurse Cindi Raglin escorted her to an operating room, the girl opened the hand to reveal a note and a coin. The note, from the girl's...

Teen solves ice scream mystery. (Health).(Maya Kaczorowski)
February 28, 2003... HAMILTON, Ontario -- Thirteen-year-old Maya Kaczorowski screams "Brain freeze!" when she eats ice cream. To find out why people like herself are so susceptible to ice cream headaches, Maya conducted an experiment on a group of schoolmates last...

Bears baring all in Florida Forest. (Life).
February 28, 2003... OCALA NATIONAL FOREST, Fla. -- Is there a Hair Club for Bears in Florida? There should be. Many bears that live in a forest surrounding the town of Lynne in north-central Florida are going bald. "They don't look like bears," Jean Biggins, a...

Cancer cured outside of body. (Technology).(Brief Article)
February 28, 2003... PAVIA, Italy -- A 48-year-old Italian man had an unusual out-of-body experience that appears to have saved his life. Doctors removed the man's cancerous liver, treated it with radiation, then returned it to his body. The out-of-body...

Insight. (Discoveries).(sculptures)
February 28, 2003... These strange sculptures walk on the wind. Called Animaris Sabulosa and Animaris Cutter Ventosa, they were designed and built by Theo Jansen, a Dutch artist who majored in physics while at college. The creatures' legs have piston that slide up...

Plant plays rotten trick on flies. (Life).(dead horse arum)
February 28, 2003... ALNARP, Sweden -- Which plant gives off your favorite floral scent? The lilac? The rose? How about the dead horse arum (Helicodiceros muscivorus)?This resident of several small islands in the Mediterranean Sea smells like rotting meat! The...

This ice sinks. (Physical).(very high density amorphous ice)(Brief Article)
February 28, 2003... INNSBRUCK, Austria -- What happens when an ice cube is dropped into a glass of water? It floats, right? Not if it's a special type of ice called very high density amorphous ice (VHDA). Normal water ice floats because it is less dense than...

Landslide threatens village. (Earth).(Pontresina, Switzerland)
February 28, 2003... PONTRESINA, Switzerland -- Construction workers recently packed the last slabs of earth into a new dam above Pontresina, a mountain village in the Alps of southeastern Switzerland. The dam was not built to protect the residents from a raging...

Who knew? (Discoveries).
February 28, 2003... If everybody in the United States who drives an SUV drove a car instead, the country could cut out Middle Eastern oil imports entirely, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Shoppers in Ireland have reduced their use of plastic...

Mystery photos. (Optricks).
February 28, 2003... MYSTERY PHOTOS [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Top: interior of a piano Middle: positive terminal on battery Bottom: bathroom drain grate

Bend your mind. (Optricks).
February 28, 2003... This mug is full of hot chocolate. How can exactly half of the hot chocolate be poured from the mug without the aid of any instrument, utensil, or container? Mindbender

What iz it. (Optricks).(cilia)
February 28, 2003... This might look like some kind of sea anemone. It's actually a clump of tiny hairlike projections that grows inside all of us. It sweeps the trachea (windpipe) clean of mucous containing trapped air particles. What are these projections called?...

Check out our web pages! (Teachers).
February 28, 2003... Current Science is more than a print publication; it's also an electronic one. The magazine's Web site is continuously updated with all-original material, much of it designed to supplement the content in the current issue of the magazine. ...

Discoveries.(word puzzles)
February 28, 2003... Fill in the Blank Find the word or words that best complete each sentence. Write the words in the blanks. 1. A -- is a moving mass of mud, soil, and rock mixed with water. 2. The main job of the human -- is regulating...