Science News

Smarts vs. Sense Regarding “ Rational and Irrational Thought : The Thinking That IQ Tests Miss,” by Keith E. Stanovich: I have been teaching at the college level for more than a dozen years, and I’ve often wondered why some of my best and brightest students utterly fail in certain tasks that less “intellectual” students are able to excel in.

Buildings consume about a third of the energy and two-thirds of the electricity in the U.S. Roofs are a good place to try to cut those figures. Because traditional black asphalt roofs heat up in summer and strain the air conditioners. White roofs are better. But they don’t retain heat in winter, so furnaces work harder.

Now scientists from the United Environment and Energy company think they have a roof fix, which they presented at a recent meeting of the American Chemical Society.

APRIL 1960 RADIATION -- “With the new measurement of the mean lethal dose for reproductive function of mammalian cells, it is now possible to explain the relatively low mean lethal dose of 400 to 500 roentgens for the entire body. Such a dose leaves only about 0.5 per cent of the body’s reproducing cells still able to multiply. Death, however, will not be immediate. The cells have each absorbed an almost infinitesimal amount of radiation energy. Though they have suffered an appreciable amount of chromosomal damage, their enzymatic machinery is, by and large, still active. Each such cell continues to perform its physiological functions in reasonably normal fashion until the time comes for it to reproduce. But at the next division, or at the next one or two divisions, reproduction will fail. ­--Theodore T. Puck”

By Jon Hurdle

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Philadelphia officials asked a state regulator on Thursday to ban the natural-gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing until its environmental effects, especially on drinking water, are studied.

One carefree summer day in California, a few college students went for a joy ride. It was the perfect day to don the shades, roll down the windows, and crank up the tunes.

But then someone noticed all the bumps in the road. These were engineering students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and the group got to thinking: Isn't there energy in that?

The United Kingdom has firmed up its position within the ranks of the space-faring, announcing on March 23 the creation of a new space center and an impending consolidated national space agency. The U.K. Space Agency (UKSA), which officially launches April 1, will take over from the British National Space Center, a hodgepodge organization operated by 10 governmental agencies . Preliminary plans for a national space agency had been announced in December. [More]