Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication articles from January 2009

Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication archives from January 2009

Sci-triv game: have fun learning about science!.
January 9, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 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...

Utsunomiya, Japan--the waitstaff at a tavern in this city north of Tokyo has been monkeying around lately.(ANIMAL SPOTS)(Brief article)
January 9, 2009... UTSUNOMIYA, Japan -- The waitstaff at a tavern in this city north of Tokyo has been monkeying around lately. That's because some of the waiters are macaques. The tavern's owner originally kept the two monkeys as pets, but he put them to work...

Toyooka, Japan--meanwhile, in another part of Japan, 19 aquarium dolphins have been put on a weight-loss program.(ANIMAL SPOTS)(Brief article)
January 9, 2009... TOYOOKA, Japan -- Meanwhile, in another part of Japan, 19 aquarium dolphins have been put on a weight-loss program. The dolphins, which live at Kinosaki Marine World, began performing poorly last summer. They failed to jump as high or stay...

The fifth stroke: was Michael Phelp's triumph at the Beijing Olympic Games a fluke?(PHYSICAL)(Cover story)
January 9, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It's the final stretch of the 100-meter butterfly. U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps enters the stretch in seventh place. Kicking off from the wall, he whips his legs up and down as he moves underwater. Bursting to the...

Deep heat: a leukemia patient invents a potential cure for the disease.(HEALTH)
January 9, 2009... What do you get when you combine pie pans, radio waves, and hot dogs? For most of us, you get maybe a quick lunch while listening to the radio. But for John Kanzius, 64, the combination paved the way for what could be a cure for cancer. In...

Earth tones: a composer in Alaska draws music from the state's environment.(EARTH)
January 9, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Countless composers have found inspiration in nature. Ludwig van Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony (1808) has passages that call to mind the running of a brook, the singing of birds, and the high winds and thunder of a...

Woof, woof! South Korean scientists give a dog a clone.(LIFE)(Cartoon)
January 9, 2009... Lab Rats Jane Lt. Col. James Warren Harris [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] YOU'RE WRITING ABOUT CLONING, HUH, McSCRUFFY? AS IN THE CLONE WARS [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] AS IN THE CLONING OF A VAST ARMY FROM THE D...

Wolf at wolffish's door.(life)(Brief article)
January 9, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BOSTON -- The poor Atlantic wolffish. Not only does it have one of the ocean's homeliest mugs, it now faces extinction, according to a U.S. conservation group. The Atlantic wolffish makes its home among the...

Stars streaming in 'dark flow'.(space)(Brief article)
January 9, 2009... GREENBELT, Md. -- Something is lurking beyond the horizon of the visible universe, something so strong that trillions of stars are being pulled toward it. An international team of astronomers that has been charting the motions of galaxies...

Rubber ducks put on ice.(earth)(Brief article)
January 9, 2009... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] JAKOBSHAVN GLACIER Greenland -- Alberto Behar wasn't playing around when he gathered 90 rubber ducks this summer. He flew the toys to Greenland and dropped them down a glacier to learn more about its behavior. ...

Believe it or not, this giant boulder is a chunk of coral.(insight)(Brief article)
January 9, 2009... Believe it or not, this giant boulder is a chunk of coral. How did it get on land? Scientists believe that several thousand years ago, a tsunami broke it off and carded it to the island country of Tonga in the Pacific Ocean. Since then, palm...

Teen's story is tall tale.(health)(Brenden Adams )
January 9, 2009... ELLENSBURG, Wash. -- Brenden Adams has stopped getting taller. That might be an issue for any other 13-year-old boy. But not for Brenden. He's 2.2 meters (7 feet, 3 inches) tall. Brenden has a genetic condition that began in infancy. Though...

Whatizit?(Optricks: From Current Science[R])(Brief article)
January 9, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This is a close-up view of a microscopic filter called a nephron. You have about 2 million nephrons in your body. Their job is removing wastes from the blood. In what organs might they be located? Answer ...

Bend your mind?(Optricks: From Current Science[R])(Brief article)
January 9, 2009... Solve this puzzle without using a ruler or anything else that has a straight edge. C lies along the same line as which, A or B? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Answer The answer is A, but most people choose B.

Mystery photos.(Optricks: From Current Science[R])(Brief article)
January 9, 2009... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Mystery Photos from top: Sarah Hartigan and Jeeny Spero/Flood Brook Union School, Londonderry, Vt.; Emily Cowles/Flood Brook Union School, Londonderry, Vt.; Hannah Hart/Flood Brook Union School, Londonderry, Vt. ...

Yoo-goo.(HANDS-ON ACTIVITY)
January 9, 2009... The Lab Rats comic in this issue describes a technique used to clone dogs. To clone is to create a replica of an organism, one that has identical genetic material, or deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The cloning technique involves removing the DNA...

Sci-triv game: have fun learning about science!
January 23, 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...

Nantou, Taiwan--a death match between a poisonous snake and a mouse stunned local firefighters here.(ANIMAL SPOTS)(Brief article)
January 23, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NANTOU, Taiwan -- A death match between a poisonous snake and a mouse stunned local firefighters here. The firefighters had rescued the 35-centimeter (14-inch) snake, a viper, from a local home and were keeping it in...

Pullman, W.Va.--when Jason Harschbarger answered a distress call from a nearby farm in October, he found that it was coming from a horse with its head stuck in a tree.(ANIMAL SPOTS)(Brief article)
January 23, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] PULLMAN, W.Va. -- When Jason Harschbarger answered a distress call from a nearby farm in October, he found that it was coming from a horse with its head stuck in a tree. Harschbarger couldn't pull out the horse,...

Here come the suns: what life would be like on a planet with two suns?(EARTH)(Cover story)
January 23, 2009... In the movie Star Wars, Luke Skywalker ekes out a hardscrabble existence with his aunt and uncle on the planet Tatooine. It's a desert planet, swept by ferocious sandstorms, where really weird life-forms-Jawas, bantha, and womp rats-battle to...

For the record: vinyl records are groovy again.(PHYSICAL)
January 23, 2009... James Acklin plays guitar and works as the music director at WPPJ, the Point Park University campus radio station in Pittsburgh. It's no surprise, then, that the 21-year-old broadcasting student is into Godspeed You! Black Emperor and other...

Robobird: a mechanical bird observes a spring mating dance.(LIFE)
January 23, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On a cold, dry expanse of Wyoming prairie, a small robot chugs along a toy train track. Swiveling its body and bobbing its head. the robot travels through a large group of greater sage grouse (Centrocercus...

Inner vision: writer Joshua Kors has learned to avoid seizures by heeding their warning signs.(HEALTH)
January 23, 2009... I had my first seizure on Thanksgiving Day, 1991. I was 13 years old. The night before, I had attended a rock concert with a family friend. At the concert, we had a bitter disagreement. I came home in a rage. At 4:30 in the morning, I...

Man punches shark to rescue dog.(too weird)(Greg LeNoir)
January 23, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ISLAMORADA, Fla. -- "Noooooooooo!" screamed Greg LeNoir as he watched a lemon shark chomp down on his dog, Jake. LeNoir and the dog had been out for their daily stroll on an ocean pier in the Florida Keys when...

Insight.(Brief article)(Photograph)
January 23, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Caption: The long-finned squid grabs and holds on to its prey with the help of barbed suction cups like the ones shown in this color-enhanced photo. The suction cups are tiny--just 0.04 centimeters (0.02 inches) in...

Teen invents electric unicycle.(technology)(Ben Gulak)
January 23, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] MILTON, Ontario -- Seventeen-year-old Ben Gulak was astounded by the air pollution in Beijing when he visited China's capital city in 2006. Squinting through the haze, he saw one of the major sources of the filthy...

Cosmic eye looks back in time.(space)(Brief article)
January 23, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] DURHAM, England -- British and U.S. astronomers were astonished last fall to look out in space and see an enormous "eye" peering back at them. Called the "Cosmic Eye," it has helped the astronomers look farther into...

Is AIDS virus 100 years old?(health)
January 23, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] TUCSON, Ariz. -- AIDS has killed roughly 25 million people since it burst on the scene in 1981. But new research by a U.S. medical sleuth suggests that AIDS had been around for many decades, and maybe even a century,...

Biologist rescues endangered monkey.(life)(Pan Wenshi)(Brief article)
January 23, 2009... NONGGUAN NATURE RESERVE, China -- Add Pan Wenshi's name to the list of history's leading protectors of primates that includes Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. Pan was China's top panda biologist when he moved to Guangxi Province in southern...

Whatizit?(Brief article)
January 23, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This isn't a serving of pasta. It's an extreme close-up of a piece of facial tissue. The entangled strands are a fibrous material that makes plant stems, stalks, and trunks strong and rigid. What might that material...

Bend your mind.
January 23, 2009... What one change will make this equation true? 81 x 9 = 801 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Answer Turn the page upside down.

Mystery photos.(Brief article)
January 23, 2009... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Mystery photos: From top: Chris Powers (2); Alexandra Faszewski/Barnstable Middle School, Hyannis, Mass. Answer Top: inside of a banana peel Middle: wind chimes Bottom: spiral notebook

Bike wheel gyroscope.(HANDS-ON ACTIVITY)
January 23, 2009... The article on page 13 of the student edition describes an electric unicycle, called the Uno, invented by a Canadian teenager. Anyone who has ever tried riding an ordinary unicycle knows how difficult it is keeping balanced on one. But the Uno...