Science

Did you know:

Recent sonar surveys of Southeastern US coastal waters clearly show deep grooves cut into the ocean floor by icebergs drifting by Charleston? A mound offshore called the "Charleston Bump" appears to have created an eddy or back flow in the Gulf Stream that swirled monster icebergs along as they dragged the bottom.

The largest mammals ever to roam the earth started their evolutionary lineage as something that looked more like a fox sized water rat. Peculiar skeletal structures in the little beast's skull and ears are only found in whales and their close relatives 48 million years later, according to fossilized remains found in southern Asia.

A subculture of drug addicts is trying to end their addiction by switching to a natural cure. They have found that the bark of a west African shrub, ibogaine, gives a pleasant hallucinatory experience, after which many addicts found that they no longer craved heroin or had withdrawal symptoms.

Spiders have complicated personalities. Water strider girls don't particularly like aggressive boys, dashing the hopes of arachnid bad boy gangs.

Smog damages fat people more than skinny people, and women more than men.

Greenland lost twice as much water from melting this last year, than is contained in all the Alpine glaciers in Europe.

A number of Mammoth tusks have been found in Alaska with particles of shattered meteorite imbedded in their tusks, which date to roughly the same period 30-36,000 years ago when populations of bears, mammoths, bison, horses, and other large animals in northern Alaska and Siberia suffered significant declines. A meteor impact capable of producing the metallic shrapnel found in the tusks would have rendered Alaska uninhabitable for decades.


Since 1921, the non profit organization "Science Service" has published Science News. Originally a few mimeographed sheets with overviews of recent science papers, the magazine is one of my favorite reads each week. The organization has renewed its pledge to "Inform, Educate, and Inspire" by changing its name to "The Society for Science and the Public".

The sustained attack on science by some religions in our country will ultimately have devastating long term effects if allowed to continue. Science is simply a method of judging the factual content of information. It is crucial to our future if we are to have one, and I guess some people have a problem with that.

Peace,

Steve

www.sciencenews.org