Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication articles from February 2009

Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication archives from February 2009

Sci-triv game: have fun learning about science!
February 6, 2009... 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 a first-row question right, 20 points for each second-row question,...

Animal spots.(Carla the angelfish)
February 6, 2009... LONDON--The staff at the London Aquarium grew alarmed in October when Carla, a resident angelfish, developed a bulge on one of her flanks. Eventually, the bulge burst, and part of Carla's stomach began to emerge from the wound. Carla had a...

Almost human: how our closet prehistoric relatives lived--and died.(LIFE)(Neanderthals)(Cover story)
February 6, 2009... In 1994, a group of explorers searching a cave in Spain stumbled upon two half-buried jawbones smiling up at them from the cave floor. Police investigators called to the cave uncovered 140 more bones nearby. The police then carted their find to...

Pumping iron: could iron supplements lower the planet's fever?(EARTH)
February 6, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Too bad Iron Man isn't real. He might save humanity from the evils of war and terrorism. But the element iron is real, and one California company is betting that iron can protect the world from another evil: global...

Over expo$ed: do unnecessary medical scans endanger patients and drive up health-care costs?(HEALTH)
February 6, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When Baptist Hospital in Miami bought a new CT scanner, Jack Ziffer decided to give it a try. A radiologist at the hospital, Ziffer specializes in interpreting images of the body produced by X-rays and other scanning...

Double vision: two new telescopes are set to reveal cosmic secrets.(EARTH/PHYSICAL)(electronic very long baseline interferometer (E-VLBI))
February 6, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There's big--and then there's big. The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is big. Its reflector dish is 305 meters (1,000 feet) wide and 51 meters (167 feet) deep. Twenty-six football...

Fact eclipses fiction in epic poem.(earth)(eclipse in Homer's The Odyssey )
February 6, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NEW YORK -- With its witches, gods, and monsters, the epic poem The Odyssey is clearly a work of fiction. Or maybe not. New research by two scientists, one from the United States and the other from Argentina,...

Sticky tape emits X-rays.(too weird)
February 6, 2009... LOS ANGELES -- Many researchers find inspiration in Nature, Science, and other august journals. A group of University of California (UC), Los Angeles, scientists found theirs recently in an old copy of Mad Scientist Today. The scientists...

Atomic ski is two skis in one.(physical)( Atomic's D2 Vario Cut)
February 6, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ALTENMARKT, Austria -- Downhill skiers often wish they could wear two pairs of skis on each run--one for the turns and the other for the straight stretches. Now that wish has come true. Atomic, an Austrian ski...

Turn the (heart) beat around.(health)
February 6, 2009... PEORIA, ILL. -- The Bee Gees first climbed the charts four decades ago with recordings such as "I've Gotta Get a Message to You" and "How Do You Mend a Broken Heart?" But their later hit "Stayin' Alive," from the 1977 movie Saturday Night...

Professor Ossolotch: is it true that honeybees dance?(Ask)
February 6, 2009... Dear Rick, Yes, honeybees dance--but not for fun or exercise. Their dance, called a waggle dance, is a form of communication. A honeybee hive has thousands of workers that build, clean, repair, and guard the nest. They also forage for...

The Walking House gives new meaning to the term mobile home.(insight)
February 6, 2009... The Walking House gives new meaning to the term mobile home. Built in England by Danish artists and U.S. engineers, the house has six hydraulic legs--legs operated by the movement of a liquid. If the owners are feeling footloose or don't like...

Bend your mind.(OPTRICKS)
February 6, 2009... A hippo weighs 2,000 pounds plus half its own weight. How much does it weigh? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 4,000 pounds

What iz it?(OPTRICKS)
February 6, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Cheese puffs on a blue shag carpet? Nope. This is a colorized close-up of viruses (in yellow) on the surface of the nasopharynx. What type of viruses might they be, and what disease might they cause? ...

Mystery photos.(OPTRICKS)
February 6, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Top: wrench Middle: pink eraser Bottom: grommets and shoelaces on a running shoe

Sticky tape electroscope.(HANDS-ON ACTIVITY)
February 6, 2009... One of the Discoveries in this issue describes a surprising source of X-rays: sticky tape. Unrolling sticky tape in an airless chamber releases the same form of electromagnetic radiation used by dentists and doctors to create images of teeth...

Sci-triv game: have fun learning about science!(Brief article)
February 27, 2009... Want to play a game of science trivia? See how many points you can win by correctly identifying who or what is pictured in each box. To find your score, gire yourself 10 points each time you get a first-row photo right, 20 points for each...

Dursley, England--pterodactyls were flying reptiles that inhabited Earth at the same time the dinosaurs did.(ANIMAL SPOTS)(Brief article)
February 27, 2009... DURSLEY, England -- Pterodactyls were flying reptiles that inhabited Earth at the same time the dinosaurs did. The name means "winged finger." Coco the cat is polydactyl, which means "many fingered." Most cats have 18 toes--five on each front...

Barcelona, Spain--what would you get if you crossed a pig with a sheep?(ANIMAL SPOTS)(Brief article)
February 27, 2009... BARCELONA, Spain -- What would you get if you crossed a pig with a sheep? Perhaps something like a mangalica pig, a hog that has not just a curly tail but a coat of curly hair. A native of Hungary, the woolly porker almost became extinct; only...

The amazing race: how do sled dogs endure Alaska's grueling Iditarod?(LIFE)
February 27, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Early next month, about 1,000 dogs will compete in the Iditarod, the world's longest sled dog race. More than 70 teams will cover 1,850 kilometers (1,150 miles) of rough, often icy, terrain from Anchorage to Nome,...

PUR and simple: a modest packet is cleansing contaminated water around the world.(EARTH)
February 27, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Greg Allgood must have seemed like a traveling magician to the woman in the rural village in Kenya he visited in 2001. He had arrived to demonstrate the remarkable action of a small foil packet. Allgood emptied...

Fortune telling: would you take a genetic test to see what's in store for your health?(HEALTH)
February 27, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Claudia Gilmore is used to tough exams. She's a student at Georgetown University. But one of the hardest exams she's ever taken was a simple blood test. After her grandmother died of ovarian cancer, Gilmore, 21,...

Who's the boss? Tomorrow's cars will drive themselves.(PHYSICAL)
February 27, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] You're riding in a car on a wide highway. It's a lovely, sunshiny day. You look casually through the window and see a car passing yours. The vehicle has no driver! A man is sitting in the front passenger seat,...

Mortgage crisis is sickening.(health)
February 27, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- The subprime mortgage crisis has cost hundreds of thousands of Americans their homes. It's also made some people sick, according to a study in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. The...

Pilot flies blind.(too weird)(Brief article)
February 27, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] LINTON-ON-OUSE AIR BASE, England -- "Mayday, Mayday," Jira O'Neill cried into his radio transmitter. The 65-year-old Englishman was flying alone over northern England and desperately needed help. He had just lost his...

Not all penguins like snow and ice.(insight)(Brief article)(Photograph)
February 27, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Caption: Not all penguins like snow and ice. The Snares crested variety spend each spring in the South Pacific Ocean, fattening themselves up on krill and squid, and the rest of the year in the lush forests of the...

First pictures of exoplanets taken.(space)
February 27, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BERKELEY, Calif. -- Paul Kalas said he "nearly had a heart attack" last year. Had he just peeked at his stock portfolio? No. Kalas is an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley. He had just spotted...

Dance club takes power from the people.(technology)(Brief article)
February 27, 2009... ROTTERDAM, Netherlands--Dance clubs are energy vampires. Their amplified music and strobing lights suck up 150 times as much power as an average household. Now a Dutch company, Sustainable Dance Club (SDC), is changing that. It has invented a...

What is the humongous fungus?(Ask Professor Ossolotch)
February 27, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What is the humongous fungus? Stacy Whitman, Seattle Dear Stacy, I believe you're referring to the honey mushroom (Armillaria ostoyae) that forestry scientists discovered several years ago in eastern...

Bend your mind.(OPTRICKS)(marble, jar)(Brief article)
February 27, 2009... Drop a marble into an empty jar on a table, Without placing anything over the mouth of the jar or putting anything else inside the jar, turn the jar upside down, and carry it across the room to another table. The marble must not fall out of the...

What iz it?(OPTRICKS)(Brief article)
February 27, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This is a satellite view of the Eye of Africa, a circular feature 50 kilometers (30 miles) wide in the desert of the country of Mauritania. Few people live in the Eye, but a hotel is located at its center. What might...

Mystery photos.(OPTRICKS)
February 27, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Top: plastic drinking straws Middle: spiral notebook Bottom: a cat's whiskers

Feel the burn.(HANDS-ON ACTIVITY)(science experiments)
February 27, 2009... The article "The Amazing Race describes the incredible endurance of the sled dogs that run the grueling Iditarod every year in Alaska. Like people, the dogs derive their energy from structures in their cells called mitochondria. ...

Global warning.(Brief article)
February 27, 2009... Humans have been contributing to the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere for over 200 years. Those gases come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels for energy. As that continues, the atmosphere...