Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication articles from September 2008

Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication archives from September 2008

Sci-triv game: have fun learning about science!
September 5, 2008... [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...

Got water? How the Southwest is coping with dry times.(EARTH)
September 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Would you drink recycled sewage? The residents of Cloudcroft, N.M., do. "We ran out of water," says Mike Nivison, the mayor's assistant. Cloudcroft is one of the first towns in the country to quench its thirst...

Two against one: two experimental therapies are taking aim at type 1 diabetes.(HEALTH)
September 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When Angelina Mazzanti was 15, her boyfriend invited her to a fancy gala to benefit diabetes research. She accepted the invitation even though she didn't know much about the disease, let alone the work being done on...

Red alert: the sad tale of Squirrel Nutkin.(LIFE)
September 5, 2008... Squirrel Nutkin has a new foe. The mischievous red rodent, immortalized by children's book author Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), lost most of his tail after taunting Old Brown, an owl who was lord of the forest. Today, Squirrel Nutkin is still in...

Super power: Super Soaker inventor Lonnie Johnson targets grlobal warming.(PHYSICAL)(Cartoon)
September 5, 2008... IN THE 1980s, WATER GUNS WERE CREEPY AND MESSED UP. SOME WERE BATTERY-POWERED BUT COULDN'T SHOOT VERY FAR... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ... AND SOME WERE TIE-INS WITH R-RATED MOVIES! AND LOOKED LIKE REAL GUNS! CONGRESS EVEN MADE...

Huge hole is swallowing town.(earth)(Brief article)
September 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] DAISETTA, Texas -- The first hint of trouble here was the appearance of cracks in the earth the morning of May 7. Shortly after, the ground began to shake and a road buckled. Then the ground collapsed altogether, and...

Good-bye Internet, hello grid.(technology)(Brief article)
September 5, 2008... GENEVA, Switzerland -- Two red-letter days in technology occurred this summer. The first marked the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a gigantic underground instrument on the border of Switzerland and France that was built to...

Fish shows record hang time.(too weird)(Brief article)
September 5, 2008... YAKU ISLAND, Japan -- Olympic athletes weren't the only record breakers this year. In May, a Japanese TV crew filmed the longest recorded flight of a flying fish. The TV crew was traveling on a ferry m the East China Sea when it videotaped the...

Do whales have bad breath?(life)(Brief article)
September 5, 2008... CHOKCHI SEA, Arctic Ocean -- The gray whales that migrate between Mexico and the Arctic Ocean each year are raising a stink. Many of the animals have acquired a revolting odor. Whalers hunted the eastern North Pacific gray whale to the...

Gene therapy reverses blindness.(health)(Brief article)
September 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Dale Turner was just a baby when he began losing his eyesight. At 21, Turner knew he would be completely blind within a few years. That fate changed, though, earlier this year when he took part...

Bend your mind.(OPTRICKS: Brain Teasers From Current Science)(Brief article)
September 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Cross your left middle finger over your left index finger, making a small V at the end. Close your eyes and place the V formed by the fingers on your nose. Notice anything strange? This is called the "Aristotle...

Mystery photos.(OPTRICKS: Brain Teaser From Current Science)
September 5, 2008... Top: cell phone; Middle: whistle; Bottom: sunflower [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

What iz it?(OPTRICKS)(Brief article)(Photograph)
September 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This greatly magnified photo shows a type of marine organism that is the most abundant form of phytoplankton in the oceans. (Phytoplankton live by photosynthesis.) It comes in many shapes but is always protected by a...

Sci-triv game: have fun learning about science.
September 19, 2008... 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...

Prato, Italy--for thousands of years, humans have searched for the fabled unicorn, a horselike creature with only one horn on its head.(ANIMAL SPOTS)
September 19, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] PRATO, Italy -- For thousands of years, humans have searched for the fabled unicorn, a horselike creature with only one horn on its head. Has that search finally ended? A nature reserve in northern Italy is home to a...

Thirsk, England--pigs normally have no problem getting their feet--and everything else--dirty.(ANIMAL SPOTS)
September 19, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THIRSK, England -- Pigs normally have no problem getting their feet--and everything else--dirty. But not Cinders, a piglet that lives on Debbie and Andrew Keeble's farm. When Cinders was born last spring, she...

Ear ache: why today's pop music sounds so bad.(PHYSICAL)(Cover story)
September 19, 2008... Turn it up!" That's what you say when you hear your favorite song playing. What you may not realize is that music companies have already beaten you to it. Over the past decade, recorded music has grown steadily louder, with each new...

What a dump: the Pacific Ocean is becoming a huge stew of plastic trash.(EARTH)
September 19, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For thousands of years, Chinese sailors rode the seas in vessels called junks. In June, a group of Americans set sail from California for Hawaii in a boat built from real junk. The purpose of the trip was to draw...

Hello kitty! How a Middle Eastern wildcat became the modern house cat.(LIFE)
September 19, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] One day several years ago, I came home to find my kitchen a mess. Cookbooks were scattered everywhere. The microwave had been pushed off the counter and lay cracked and broken on the floor. At first, I was...

Miracle grow: new medical techniques help regrow body parts.(HEALTH)
September 19, 2008... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Three years ago, Lee Spievack, now 69, was helping a customer fix a radio-controlled model airplane at the HobbyTown USA store where he works in Cincinnati. While he was pointing to the airplane's engine and its...

Oil shock hits restaurants.(physical)
September 19, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ARLINGTON, Wash. -- A bizarre crime wave has struck U.S. restaurants. Instead of cash, the thieves are taking trash--used cooking oil. Cooking oil rustlers have hit restaurants in 20 states, according to a...

Lake vanishes in a day.(earth)
September 19, 2008... WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- In issue 1, Current Science reported on the remarkable shrinkage of two bodies of water on the Colorado River-Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Those losses are nothing compared to what a U.S. scientist witnessed in Greenland....

Ask professor Ossolotch.(DISCOVERIES: News Briefs From Current Science)
September 19, 2008... Do cell phones cause cancer? Evan Spading, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Dear Evan, I wish I had an answer for you. What I can say is that the American Cancer Society lists the link between cell phone use and cancer among its "Top Ten Cancer...

Frog has switchblade claws.(too weird)
September 19, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Meet the X-Frog. A U.S. scientist working in Africa has described a hairy amphibian whose claws sprout from its feet the way the claws spring from the hands of the X-Men's Wolverine. David...

Moon flashes Earth.(Space)
September 19, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- Since 2005, U.S. astronomers have reported seeing more than 100 flashes of light on the moon. Are aliens trying to communicate from there? No. Much to their surprise, the astronomers have...

Jet bike takes off.(technology)
September 19, 2008... MEDFORD, Ore. -- Bob Maddox has a need for speed. A long time skydiver, he once competed in "tracking" contests, in which skydivers shoot horizontally through the sky at up to 190 kilometers (120 miles) an hour. Maddox even toyed with the...

Bend your mind.(OPTRICKS: Brain Teasers From Current Science[R])
September 19, 2008... How can you tell, without any measuring instruments, whether an open cylindrical glass is more than half full of liquid? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Bend your Mind: Tilt the glass so that the water's surface meets the top edge of the bottom...

Whatizit?(OPTRICKS: Brain Teasers From Current Science[R])
September 19, 2008... This is a close-up of microscopic notches in a thin, circular sheet of aluminum. When a laser beam scans the sheet, the notches reflecting beam, and the reflections are converted into an electrical signal. That signal can be amplified and fed...

Mystery photos.(OPTRICKS: Brain Teasers From Current Science[R])
September 19, 2008... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Top: fire hose; Middle: watermelon; Bottom: hind end of a bee