Science World articles from September 2007

Science World archives from September 2007

Get a grip.(PHYSICAL/FORCES)(tree frog)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... Some tree frogs can stick sideways to tree trunks and even hang upside down. Jon Barnes, a scientist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, recently discovered what gives these frogs their ability to cling at such extreme angles. Tree...

Every pitch counts.(GRAPH IT/HEALTH)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... What's the most important baseball stat this season? For many young pitchers, it's the number of halls they're allowed to hurl across home plate. That's because Little League Baseball has set a limit on how many pitches players can throw,...

Colossal crystals.(EARTH/CAVES)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... A cave beneath Mexico's Naica Mountains sparkles with some of the largest crystals ever discovered. One is taller than a three-story building and weighs as much as seven African elephants. Geologists from Spain's University of Granada recently...

Soft center.(SPACE/PLANETS)(Mercury)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... Scientists have long assumed that Mercury has a solid core. Not so: A new study suggests the tiny planet has a molten interior similar to that of Earth. Using powerful telescopes, astronomer Jean-Luc Margot of Cornell University in Ithaca,...

Life aquatic.(PHYSICAL/TECH)(Biocoil helps scientist survived underwater)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... Last April, a scientist spent 13 days living inside a watertight capsule that was dunked into a lake. He wouldn't have survived without help from a group of teens. For his bioSUB project, biologist Lloyd Godson wanted to learn what it...

Pint-size vs. super-size.(GRAPH IT/GENETICS)(genes of dogs determine their size)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... From tiny Chihuahuas to towering Great Danes, dogs come in a wider range of sizes than any other mammal. Scientists have recently discovered that a small piece of canine DNA (the molecule that carries hereditary information) helps determine a...

Numbers in the news.(SCIENCE NEWS)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... 1,800,000 species will be catalogued in a new reference guide, called the Encyclopedia of Life. The Web site plans to go online next year. 500,000 silver coins have been recovered from a 350-year-old shipwreck that occurred near the United...

Smart suckers: discover why scientists think octopuses and their relatives are such brainiacs.(LIFE: ANIMAL ADAPTATIONS)(Cover story)
September 3, 2007... Snuggled in the corner of a glass aquarium, a brown-and-white female octopus awaits breakfast. The animal's eight limbs are a bit curled and its eyes look upward to meet the gaze of biologist Jean Boal of Millersville University in...

Hands-on science: (no lab required) after reading "Smart Suckers" (p. 8), try out this activity to get an octopus's-eye view of what it's like to navigate a maze..(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... PREDICTS Researchers use mazes to test octopuses' ability to learn and remember. The solution to the maze may seem obvious to the researchers who are able to see the maze from above, but to the slippery test subjects inside the maze, it...

Pop star: scientists predict sun explosions using 3-D images.(PHYSICAL: MATTER AND ENERGY)
September 3, 2007... Put on a pair of 3-D glasses and check out this latest snapshot of the sun! That's what scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are doing to learn more about Earth's nearest star. Although the sun looks like...

The case of the disappearing bees: scientists investigate the cause of millions of disappearing bees.(LIFE: INSECTS)
September 3, 2007... When honeybees across America started to pull a disappearing act last fall, beekeepers were perplexed. Hives that had contained thriving bee colonies just a few days earlier sat nearly empty. The bees had vanished without a trace. The...

I want that job: interested in bees? Consider a career in entomology.(CAREERS)
September 3, 2007... WHAT'S AN ENTOMOLOGIST? An entomologist is a scientist who studies insects, including bees. Since there are so many different species of insects in the world, many scientists choose to specialize in studying a particular species. For...

Danger zones: when catastrophe strikes, some places become nearly impossible spots to live.(EARTH: POLLUTION)
September 3, 2007... What happens when a natural or human-made disaster turns a once-safe place into a hazardous area? All of a sudden, people may find themselves sharing their neighborhood with a killer lake or forced to inhale deadly pollution. Discover the...

Clamp down.(GROSS OUT)(surgery on Chang Po-yu's detached limb)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... This may be a zoo worker's worst nightmare. Last April, Chang Po-yu was tending a crocodile at a zoo in Taiwan when the 200 kilogram (440 pound) reptile chomped off his left forearm. Chang and his detached limb were rushed to a hospital. ...

Mystery photo.(YOU CAN DO IT)
September 3, 2007... WHAT'S THIS? Hint: You are looking at its gills--and it is not a fish. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Fowl ball?(YOU CAN DO IT)
September 3, 2007... Explain this! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Tease your brain.(YOU CAN DO IT)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... There are 10 glasses in a row. The first five glasses are filled with water and the last five are empty. How would you create a row of alternating empty and full glasses by only moving two of the glasses? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Why do beans give people gas?(ASK ScienceWorld)(Letter to the editor)
September 3, 2007... Many foods that contain carbohydrates can give you gas. And beans contain large amounts of these hard-to-digest sugars. Chemicals, called enzymes, in your digestive system can't completely break down these tough compounds. Luckily, the lower...

Call of the wild.(LIFE/CONSERVATION)(using cell phone technology to drive leopards from villages)(Brief article)
September 17, 2007... How do you prevent wild leopards from wandering too close to areas populated by humans? Give the cats a phone call. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Leopards in Gujarat, India, are losing their natural habitats to farming and industrial...

Great balls of fire.(SPACE/SUPERNOVAS)(Brief article)
September 17, 2007... One of the most massive stars in the galaxy, named Eta Carinae, is on the verge of an explosive death. The blast could appear brighter than the moon in Earth's sky and may last for months. Giants like Eta Carinae, which is around 100 to 150...

No snow? No problem.(PHYSICS/TECHNOLOGY)(Brief article)
September 17, 2007... A new skateboard allows you to simulate the experience of snowboarding on blacktop instead of on a mountaintop. The "Flowboard" has a curved row of seven wheels on each end. This design allows riders to carve tighter turns than on a traditional...

Number in the news.(Brief article)
September 17, 2007... 7,000,000 pounds of trash were removed from waterways last year during the Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 51,200 gallons of frozen water keep the air inside the Metropolitan Life building in...

Ad busters: two teens take on a corporate giant to prove that a popular drink wasn't all it claimed to be.(LIFE: SCIENTIFIC METHOD)(Jenny Suo and Anna Devathasan, GlaxoSmithKline, Ribena)
September 17, 2007... WINNING SCIENCE PROJECT Jenny Suo and Anna Devathasan never thought that a simple science project would end up making them famous in their home country of New Zealand. That is, until the two 17-year-olds exposed a startling fact about a...

Your laundry can make you sick: one teen searches for ways to zap illness-causing germs that lurk in your clothes.(PHYSICAL: WRITE A PROCEDURE)(Aarthi Shankar)
September 17, 2007... Many people believe that a spin in a washing machine turns dirty clothes sparkly clean. Aarthi Shankar did too, until she came across a study by Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona, which showed that household washers...

Highway hazard: one teen samples roadside soils, searching for traces of a dangerous element once used in car fuels.(EARTH: ORGANIZE YOUR FINDINGS)(Max Schneck, lead)
September 17, 2007... One hundred fifty thousand cars zip along the Long Island Expressway (LIE) in New York each day. Max Schneck, a 16-year-old who lives near the highway, didn't give much thought to this fact until a trip to the doctor's office changed the way he...

Tease your brain.(YOU CAN DO IT)(Brief article)
September 17, 2007... The three squares below were drawn from a single line. Starting anywhere, can you trace the entire shape without lifting your pencil off the page or crossing over a line you've already traced? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Why do we get bruises?(ASK ScienceWorld: SCHOLASTIC)(Brief article)
September 17, 2007... Bruises form when a blunt object strikes your body hard enough to cause tiny blood vessels underneath your skin to burst and leak. As red blood cells escape into the surrounding tissue, the telltale sign of a bruise appears--a sore purplish...