Science & Society
- Animals
Rare as a rhino
Most species are rare. Some have always been rare. A problem develops when people are responsible for accelerating a species’ rarity to the point that extinction threatens.
- Health & Medicine
Recovery help from the blogosphere
And some who have been there now are sharing tips on what it takes to become a successful survivor.
- Health & Medicine
The media’s dangerous influence on body image
A study found how powerful TV and ad messages can be in distorting the attitudes about body image among young girls in Fiji.
- Archaeology
Mummies existed before Egypt’s pyramids
Materials from an ancient Egyptian cemetery suggest people were preserving their dead long before the pyramids and pharaohs.
- Health & Medicine
Early school starts can turn teens into ‘zombies’
Teens face serious consequences when they don’t get enough sleep. Yet most school start times don’t allow a full night’s rest, doctors say. The result: Too many students become ‘walking zombies’.
- Health & Medicine
Screen time: Most U.S. teens overindulge
Too many 12- to 15-year olds spend hours each day doing little more than pushing buttons on the TV remote or a computer’s keyboard, a government survey finds.
- Physics
Comic book heroine teaches science
Most people don’t think of superheroes as science teachers. But a comic book from the American Physical Society wants to change that. Meet Spectra, the human laser.
- Science & Society
Dissect a frog and keep your hands clean
Dissecting frogs can be a fun and useful way to learn about anatomy. If you don’t have a frog on hand, here are three smartphone apps that allow you have your frog legs and dissect them, too.
- Animals
A library with no books
The Macaulay Library at Cornell University has no books. Instead, the audio library has been accumulating sound recordings since 1929.
- Animals
A library of tweets (and howls and grunts)
The Macaulay Library houses a world of animal sounds. And now anyone with an Internet connection can check out this audio collection.
- Earth
Thirst for water moves and shakes California
Here’s a scary cost to pumping up groundwater to slake the thirst of crops in California’s Central Valley: It may uplift nearby mountains and trigger tiny earthquakes, experts find.
- Tech
Saving vanishing ‘tongues’
More than 3,000 world languages face extinction. Linguists are turning to mobile apps and other tech tools to preserve these endangered languages.
