TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| Canadian bacon: Pigs in Canada sick with swine flu Last Friday, we reported on Egypt's recent attempt to curb transmission of the human H1N1 epidemic by butchering all 300,000 of its pigs. Experts we interviewed said there was no sound rationale for such a move, because pigs had never been infected with the new virus, which has sickened at least 1085 people in 21 countries – until now. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Lessons learned from a beloved blue butterfly's resurgence Thirty years ago, the large blue butterfly (Maculinea arion) disappeared from England, the victim of over-eager collectors and habitat degradation. But today the species is thriving in the UK, and boasts more colonies than before its populations started declining in the 1950s. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Shrinks [Below is the original script. But a few changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]At first glance it seems like good news: This summer the size of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone is less than half its forecasted size, measuring about 3,000 square miles, according to the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Tree Electricity Runs Nano-Gadget [ The following is an exact transcript of this podcast. ]If scientists have their way, we may someday be tapping maples--not for pancake fixin’s, but for power. Because researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle have found there’s enough electricity flowing in trees to run an electronic circuit. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Illuminating the Lilliputian: 10 Bioscapes Photo Contest Winners Revealed We are approaching the millennial anniversary of the first meaningful written description of how lenses and light could be used to magnify objects. It was in 1011 that Arab scientist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) began writing the Book of Optics , which described the properties of a magnifying glass, principles that later led to the invention of the microscope. The entrants in the 2009 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition provide fitting tribute to nearly 1,000 years of making the invisible visible.Optical microscopy, energized by generation after generation of technological advance, continues to furnish dazzling proof that beyond the resolution of the human eye resides a sweepingly large world of small things, both around and within us. The artistic beauty of the microcosm can be witnessed in these photographs of the beadlike band of toxin-carrying compartments on the tentacle of the Portuguese man-of-war, the gemlike quality of row on row of single-celled algae and the red-and-yellow patterning of a Triceratops bone, reminiscent of a loud necktie. A selection of winning and honorable mention images that particularly appealed to us at Scientific American follows. [More] rss.sciam.com |