BABYLONIAN CALCULUS?
IT’S RARE THAT calculus makes the cover of Science, the weekly magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Nor is ancient Babylon an expected Science cover subject. … Continue reading
LIFE SPANS IN THE ANIMAL WORLD
DISCUSSIONS OF animal life spans include us too. There’s a Special Section on this topic in the December 4, 2015, issue of Science, published by the American Association for the … Continue reading
READ EM’ MATH AT BEDTIME
HEARING MATH stories is beneficial for kids, just as hearing bedtime tales promotes kids acquiring reading skills. The payoff is especially dramatic in families with math-anxious parents. Proof positive of … Continue reading
CAN YOU SEE ME NOW?
SCIENCE IS moving forward to match fiction. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling’s hero receives an invisibility cloak, a silky garment that makes him disappear. Now, Science … Continue reading
AN EXCESS OF RESOURCE
THE WATER MAINS of Paris burst in August. This sounds like the title of a Hemingway pastiche, but actually it’s a truism of infrastructure. What’s more, it has implications in … Continue reading
PUPILS—VERTICAL, HORIZONTAL OR OTHERWISE
THE PUPILS I have in mind here aren’t kids in a classroom, they’re the openings in eyeballs, adjustable for different lighting conditions through many evolutionary variations. I learned about these … Continue reading
IS URBAN LIFE TOO HYGIENIC?
CHLDREN WHO grow up on dairy farms are considerably less likely to develop allergies or asthma than their urban counterparts. This finding, published in Science, September 4, 2015, offers new … Continue reading
WATER BUGS DO IT, BUT CAN WE?
GERRIDS ARE a family of insects including water bugs, pond skaters, water striders and jesus bugs, all of which can travel atop the water. Water bugs use their mass, musculature … Continue reading
MAN, THE FIERCEST—AND MOST SHORT-SIGHTED?—PREDATOR
HUMANS ARE hunter-gathers by nature. However, in contrast to other predators, we are also technologists devising improved means of predation. And we are the only predators hunting for trophy or … Continue reading
ENGINEERING THE SEAHORSE
THERE’S A joke about God’s engineering background: He’s an Electrical Engineer because of the brain’s neurological wonders, a Mechanical Engineer because of the skeleton’s elegant efficiency, a Chem Eng because … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 