The Evening Standard (London, England) articles from January 2009

The Evening Standard (London, England) archives from January 2009

This month in Odyssey.(SCIENCE SCOOPS)
January 1, 2009... Whether it's a brand new puppy, panda, or Patrick, your newborn brother, most of us would agree, babies are legitimately cute. Nature makes them that way because they require so much work. It adds assurance that they'll be taken care of. ...

Powerful eyes.(SCIENCE SCOOPS)(cuttlefish eggs)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Think that itty bitty egg at the bottom of the ocean is mindlessly sitting there, waiting to hatch? Actually, it's watching you! Cuttlefish eggs are encased in black ink when they are first laid, but eventual]y the...

Thanks to your twin brother.(SCIENCE SCOOPS)(influence of testosterone on girl twin)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As boys develop in the womb, they produce a lot of testosterone, the hormone that makes them develop male characteristics. But how do these doses of hormones affect a girl twin who happens to be in the womb at the...

Searching for secrets of the universe.(SCIENCE SCOOPS)
January 1, 2009... Beneath the ground, spanning the border between France and Switzerland, there is a massive human-built cavern. Thousands of magnets, wires, and high-tech equipment line the 16.7 miles of this oval-shaped tunnel to form the Large Hadron Collider...

Eat your veggies!(SCIENCE SCOOPS)(how babies can like eating vegetables)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] YUCK! Get those peas away from me! Does that sound like you at dinner? Next time you don't want to eat your vegetables, find out if your mom breastfed you as a baby. If she did, ask what she ate. Were peas...

Memristor discovery.(SCIENCE SCOOPS)(memory resistor)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Watch out silicon valley, there's a new kind of memory on its way! Memristor stands for "memory resistor." Transistors, resistors, and capacitors are all fundamental building blocks of electrical systems described in...

Where don't babies come from?
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It's the most famous question of all time. Every little kid asks it: Where do babies come from? It makes some parents freak. The old fashioned ones tell stories about storks and cabbage patches. The hip ones say they...

Where do frog princes come from?(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] TO find out where babies come from, a scientist named Lazzaro Spallanzani did a dandy experiment in 1777. Spallanzani dressed up male frogs in tight-fitting taffeta britches. He then introduced his "frog princes" to...

Nine awesome months!(human gestation)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IT TAKES JUST 266 DAYS for a new human being to form from a single cell! That's even more amazing when you think that each tiny newborn has the potential to grow up and make the world a better place. Actually, 266...

Sharing a room: multiple births.
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Being pregnant with one baby is indeed wondrous. Now imagine a pregnancy that results in twins, triplets, or even more babies all sharing the same space at the same time. Normally, one woman out of 90 in the...

Happy birth day!(human gestation)(Essay)
January 1, 2009... HAPPY BIRTHDAY! COOL! This calls for a party with balloons and presents, right? Actually, the first birthday you ever had wasn't quite like that. No one was thinking about candles or cake. As your life changed flora floating in a quiet,...

A day in the life of obstetrician Dr. Robin Kalish.(Essay)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IT'S 3:50 P.M. ON THE THURSDAY BEFORE A LABOR DAY WEEKEND. Dr. Robin Kalish is standing at the head of a corridor in the maternity ward of a hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She looks down at the...

Testing, testing ... You think you take lots of tests? Developing babies and their moms go through lots of tests and exams too. The results can mean more than any test at school.
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Expecting? Amanda Hinrichs of Emporia, Kansas, first learned about both her pregnancies with a home pregnancy test. Home tests check a woman's urine for human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG. Women produce this...

Y am I a boy? How sex is determined in humans and other species.
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Have you ever wondered why you are a boy and not a girl or vice versa? In humans (and most other mammals), there is a specific scientific process that determines sex and it has to do with chromosomes. So what...

Celebrating life: science lends hands.(test tube babies Heather and Todd Tilton)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "I'm pretty normal." That's the first thing Heather Tilton said during a 2008 interview on the program Today Show Health. Wearing a dark pantsuit that highlighted her blond hair, she did indeed look like other...

Helping hopeful parents: an interview with embryologist Phyllis Risch.(People to Discover)(Interview)
January 1, 2009... "The reason I work in embryology is that there are people who would like to have their own children bur who have difficulty getting pregnant.... I know bow important having, my family is. To be able to help others develop their families is...

The chicken, or the egg? To learn about the science of birth, just open a carton of eggs.(ACTIVITY TO DISCOVER)
January 1, 2009... Of course, chickens won't hatch from food eggs (what embryologists call unfertilized eggs). But these supermarket eggs can help reveal some of the specialized structures that make eggs such an effective birthing system. So are you ready to try...

Dangerous day one: imagine as a brand new baby falling six feet as you are born! Or being born miles away from your family and having to find them before something bigger and meaner eats you! Well, that doesn't happen to human babies, but it does in the animal world. When animals are born in wild they have to fight to survive. The first day can be the most dangerous and scary of all.
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] KEMP'S RIDLEY SEA TURTLES: BEACH-BABY BATTLES Some newborns have to make it entirely on their own. Kemp's ridley sea turtles are an endangered species which fight for life from the...

Rebecca's first year.(a mother remembers her children's infancy)(Essay)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Welcome to the world! You're such a miracle and growing so fast that I can hardly do anything else but gaze 24/7 at the amazing little person that you are. You weighed seven pounds, three ounces at birth and...

The option package.(Short story)
January 1, 2009... It was D Day. Dog Day. Decision Day. Sixty-three days since we'd visited the Best Friends Forever clinic with a vial of Rufus's blood. The vet saved it for us after Rufus drifted off into the big sleep. Dr. Wilson couldn't do much after a truck...

The "eggcentric" zookeeper.(BRAIN STRAIN)
January 1, 2009... Molly is visiting a very strange zoo, run by a zookeeper named Ted. It consists of just two types of animals: giraffes and ostriches. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The visitor gazes across the zoo's wooded area. "How many animals do you...

Star chart.(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... The monthly All-Sky Chart depicts the sky (minus the Moon) as it appears at 6 p.m. on Jan. 15. Useful all month (except for planet positions), the chart is also accurate for 7 p.m. on Jan. 1 and 5 p.m. on Jan. 31. To use the All-Sky Chart,...

Happy New Year how to find the winter triangle.(STARGAZING with Jack Horkheimer)(Cartoon)
January 1, 2009... GREETINGS, GREETINGS, FELLOW STARGAZERS. IT'S TIME TO RING IN THE NEW YEAR! AND WHAT BETTER WAY IS THER TO DO THAT THAN TO USE--NO, NOT A BELL... BUT A TRIANGLE! THE WINTER TRIANGLE! WHERE IS IT? C'MON, I'LL SHOW YOU... TO FIND THE...

Two years in a day.(YOU'VE GOT MAIL!)(Short story)
January 1, 2009... Neil Goldenstein glanced down at his newspaper and sighed. He already knew what it said, right down to the misused comma on page 3C, because Neil had been reading the same newspaper for 726 days straight. A Boy Scout troop was given an award,...