Monthly Archives: October 2003

Are you a health-conscious do-gooder worried about giving out sugary treats this Halloween that may rot children’s teeth and weigh them down with unnecessary calories? Forget the boxes of raisins (a lame treat anyway), and hand out nonedible toys instead, … Continue reading →

Joining the ranks of animals like humans and monkeys, walruses have been found to be mostly right-handed. The walrus prefers using its right flipper over its left one when foraging underwater for food buried in mud on the sea bed. … Continue reading →

Do you think getting a head count of all the people living in the United States is hard? Try doing a census on everything that lives in the world’s oceans. The Census of Marine Life is a massive, billion-dollar, 10-year-long … Continue reading →

Finally, what adulterous female songbirds have always wanted: Scientific proof of the evolutionary advantages of promiscuity. A team of researchers from the Max Planck Research Center for Ornithology in Germany and the Zoological Museum in Norway spent four years studying … Continue reading →

When you’re flying in a jumbo jet, do you ever think about how much of the plane’s holding capacity is devoted to carrying fuel? A team of researchers from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., NASA’s Dryden Flight … Continue reading →

It may not look much like Kermit, being bloated and bright purple with a long, pointy nose, but a frog recently discovered in the mountains of southern India may well become the next big amphibian celebrity. Described by Franky Bossuyt … Continue reading →

Now if I were an alien, where would I be? According to astrobiologist Maggie Turnbull of the University of Arizona in Tucson, the best bet would be 37 Gem, the 37th brightest star in the constellation of Gemini, some 42 … Continue reading →

Have you ever had your heart broken or your feelings hurt? That pain may be more real than you’d guess. Researchers in the October 10 issue of Science report that the brain responds to rejection in the same way as … Continue reading →

Do you blame your genes for what you do? A study in the October 10 issue of Science says that honeybees should. An individual bee’s occupation can be predicted by knowing what genes are active in its brain. “We have … Continue reading →

The world’s oceans may be becoming more acidic due to the burning of fossil fuels, say researchers in the Sept. 25 Nature. Ken Caldeira and Michael E. Wickett from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California used a computer model … Continue reading →