Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication articles from March 2005

Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication archives from March 2005

Sci-triv game: have fun learning about science!(Illustration)
March 4, 2005... Want to play a game of science trivia? See how many points 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...

Twin Falls, Idaho -- Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 movie thriller, The Birds, has been playing for real every day in the city of Twin Falls.(Who Knew?)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2005... TWIN FALLS, Idaho -- Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 movie thriller, The Birds, has been playing for real every day in the city of Twin Falls. In November, thousands of crows descended on the downtown area, where they have roosted on trees, buildings,...

San Francisco -- an invasion of another type happened in December at an animal shelter in downtown San Francisco.(Who Knew?)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2005... SAN FRANCISCO -- An invasion of another type happened in December at an animal shelter in downtown San Francisco. One hundred seventy-six rats were dropped off anonymously at the shelter. Staff member Sabrina Simmons instantly became the...

Crude awakening: the world's oil supply is limited. How much is left, and when will it run out?(Earth)(Cover Story)
March 4, 2005... What do tires, tennis rackets, trash bags, and toothpaste have in common? They all start with the letter T, of course. They are also products made from "Texas tea"--crude oil, or liquid petroleum. Oil is the single most important item...

Judgment day: the U.S. Supreme Court is looking at brain science to help it decide whether it should outlaw the death penalty for children under 18.(Health)
March 4, 2005... In 1994, Christopher Simmons was sentenced to death for murdering a Missouri woman when he was 17 years old. Simmons's lawyers appealed the decision, and last summer the Missouri Supreme Court overturned Simmons's death sentence, ruling that it...

Turning the tables: scientists are custom fitting the old periodic table for their own specialized uses.(Physical)
March 4, 2005... Like many scientists, geologist Bruce Railsback uses the periodic table as a handy reference. The periodic table is, of course, the chart in which the elements are arranged according to their similarities and differences. Railsback even has a...

Dead in the water: a huge 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico is starved for oxygen and devoid of life. What can revive it?(Life)
March 4, 2005... Every minute of every day, the Mississippi River dumps 1 billion liters (260 million gallons) of water into the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi River water carries huge amounts of fertilizer that have been washed into it from surrounding farms....

Girls care 4 bears.(Life)
March 4, 2005... VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Last November, Alev Olcay, 13, and her sister, Lara, 10, noticed an article in a local newspaper about two bear cubs that had been caught raiding a garbage container at a nearby supermarket. The bears were...

Ask Professor Ossolotch: what is dioxin poisoning?(Discoveries)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2005... Dear Taylor, You've obviously been keeping up with current events. Dioxin poisoning made the headlines in December when doctors concluded what Viktor Yushchenko, a popular candidate in Ukraine's November 21 presidential runoff election,...

Insight.(Discoveries)
March 4, 2005... When Paul Stender goes to the bathroom, he really goes. Stender, 43, a former mechanic, rigged up a portable outhouse with go-kart wheels and an old Boeing jet turbine engine that can hit 74 kilometers (46 miles) per hour. The fireball erupts...

Students: beware of gas attack.(Earth)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2005... MIYAKE, Japan -- The kids in the village of Miyake start the day with the same routine as do students elsewhere in Japan. They drag themselves out of bed, scarf down some breakfast, stuff their backpacks with books and electronics, grab their...

Mind control runs computer.(Too Weird)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2005... ALBANY, N.Y. -- In the last issue, Current Science reported on a new computer that can be controlled by movements of a user's nose. Two American researchers have now developed software that enables a user to operate a computer through mind...

Professor crochets chaos.(Math)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2005... BRISTOL, England -- During Christmas break in 2002, Hinke Osinga was crocheting lace patterns at home when her partner, Bernd Krauskopf, asked, "Why don't you crochet something useful?" Two years later, Osinga came up with what looks like a...

Mystery photos.(Optricks)
March 4, 2005... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ANSWERS Top: rose petals Middle: garbage disposal drain Bottom: basketball net WANTED: Mystery Photos Almost all the Mystery Photos that appear in Current Science are taken by readers of the...

Bend your mind.(Optricks)(Brief Article)
March 4, 2005... Two identical glasses filled with the same amount of water are balanced on a scale. What happens if you stick a finger in one of the glasses. Will one side become heavier, causing the balance to tip? ANSWERS The glass with the finger...

Whatizit?(Optricks)
March 4, 2005... These are fossil remnants of ammonites, creatures that lived from 400 to 65 million years ago. Ammonites are ancient relatives of large-headed, tentacled marine animals that move by a form of jet propulsion that involves squirting water through...

Sci-triv game.(science test)(Illustration)
March 18, 2005... SCI-TRIV GAME Have fun learning about science! 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...

Who? Knew.(cuttlefish)
March 18, 2005... ADELAIDE, Australia -- Mating season can be a real drag for the male giant Australian cuttlefish (Sepia apama). Females outnumber males by four to one. Even worse, females reject seven out of every 10 attempts that males make at mating with...

Odd duck: the preposterous platypus has baffled and provoked scientists--even Charles Darwin.(Life)(duckbilled platypus)(Cover Story)
March 18, 2005... In 1799, a crate shipped to England from Australia contained the specimen of a creature that looked like nothing seen before. One scientist, George Shaw, suspected that the specimen was a hoax, patched together from different animal parts--a...

On the edge? Is Mount St. Helens ready to blow again?(Earth)
March 18, 2005... September 26, 2004: Gray ash swirled around geologist Mike Poland as he climbed out of a helicopter high on Mount St. Helens in Washington state. Poland had work to do. Days earlier, the volcano had begun to rumble. When Mount St. Helens...

Pox unlocked? Should scientists be allowed to tinker with the smallpox virus?(Health)
March 18, 2005... When medical researchers go to work at a lab in Atlanta, they don blue hazmat suits to protect themselves against their subject: the Variola virus. Variola is the highly contagious germ that causes smallpox, one of history's worst mass...

Battle of the bulbs: will LEDs or incandescents win the fight of the lights?(Physical)
March 18, 2005... How many engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? Thousands of them, each one smart, dedicated, putting in long hours over many years. That's a lot of work hours, but the engineers aren't changing one bulb. They're changing one type of...

Teen builds generator from junk.(Technology)(alternative energy)(Aaron Goldin)
March 18, 2005... ENCINITAS, Calif. -- When he was a kid, Aaron Goldin liked to have fun hooking up gyroscopes to motors. At 17, he's still playing with gyroscopes and recently won $100,000 for his efforts. The money was the top individual scholarship awarded by...

KOs keep Tintin young.(Health)(pituitary gland damage)
March 18, 2005... SHERBROOKE, Quebec -- Why don't cartoon characters grow old? Why has Mickey Mouse's voice never changed? Why hasn't Maggie Simpson given up her pacifier? A Canadian doctor and his two junior assistants have found an explanation for the...

Moon poses new enigma.(Earth)(Saturn's Moon, Iapetus)
March 18, 2005... SATURN -- Saturn's moon Iapetus might consider going on a diet. It has a pronounced bulge around its middle. The bulge was photographed by the Cassini spacecraft when it flew by Iapetus in early January. Images beamed back to Earth show a...

Salmon spawn trout.(Too Weird)
March 18, 2005... TOKYO -- Most kids bear some family resemblance to their parents. But a group of trout that hatched recently in Japan look nothing like their dads because the dads are all salmon! For the first time, scientists have altered the biology of one...

Saw saves fingers.(Technology)
March 18, 2005... WILSONVILLE, Ore. -- No one will ever accuse Steve Gass of lacking faith in his ideas. Gass is the inventor of a table saw designed to protect carpenters from accidentally cutting and even losing their fingers. When testing his invention,...

Ask professor Ossolotch.(Discoveries)(decompression sickness)
March 18, 2005... What are the bends? Topher Miller Davis, Calif. Dear Topher, The bends is the common term for decompression sickness, The condition happens to deep-sea divers who surface too quickly. Dissolved nitrogen gas in the blood comes...

Insight.(Discoveries)(The world's smallest book and arthropods)
March 18, 2005... Only a bookworm could read the world's smallest book. Published in Germany, the 24-page leather-bound tome measures just 2.4 by 2.9 millimeters. The bookworm is actually a millipede, an arthropod with a cylinder-shaped body and as many as 1,000...

Mystery photos.(Optricks)
March 18, 2005... Top: bottom of an iron Middle: a Doritos tortilla chip Bottom: a cat's eye

Bend your mind.(Optricks)(optical illusion)
March 18, 2005... Are the two vertical bars the same shade of gray? Yes. The one on the left looks darker because it appears against a lighter background.

Whatizit?(Optricks)(lava)
March 18, 2005... Hawaiians have labeled this thing pahoehoe, which they pronounce "pah-HOH-eh-HOH-eh." It has a smooth, glassy skin and "toes" that can move at a rate of nearly 3 meters an hour. You wouldn't want to see a pahoehoe in your yard. What is it? ...