Discover, November 1, 1993
Bugs don’t need flowers as much as flowers need bugs: insects were fruitful and diversified long before the first flower bloomed.
Over the past two summers of digging in Arizona’s Petrified Forest, Stephen Hasiotis and Russell Dubiel of the United States Geological Survey have unearthed numerous hunks of sandstone filled with miniature tunnels, ramps, and chambers–all trademarks of termite nests. What makes the nests remarkable is that they are 220 million years old.
Discover, October 1, 1993
The ozone hole over Antarctica is likely to get worse before it gets better: it seems to lead a self-reinforcing life of its own.
Spring is returning to the Antarctic, and with it the hole in the stratospheric ozone layer. Last year’s hole was the deepest ever; this year’s is expected to be as bad and possibly worse. Although 74 nations have committed themselves under the Montreal Protocol to ending the production of chlorofluorocarbons by the end of 1995, ozone-destroying chlorine from the compounds already in use will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere for another decade after that.
Discover, October 1, 1993
When one sense is impaired, another may do. Researchers are building devices that let the blind hear images and the deaf touch sounds.
For decades many researchers have dreamed of giving sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf with surgically implanted devices. Yet the blind and deaf themselves have developed a completely different strategy: training another sense to do the job. People who read braille, for instance, can process written information as quickly through their skin as others do with their eyes. Sign language, although purely visual, is as rich and complex as any spoken language and is processed in the same regions of the brain.
Discover, September 1, 1993
The growing power of computing has been harnessed to provide a patient, high-tech teacher for the illiterate.
The big players in the computer industry have spent millions in recent years on the development of multimedia technologies–hardware and software that combine video, photographs, graphics, text, and stereo sound. One offshoot of these systems has been a new way for students to learn; while reading about John F. Kennedy, for example, a student can point at the word speeches on a computer screen to see and hear the president at his inauguration.
Discover, September 1, 1993
Welcome to the technology of flatland. Researchers around the world are discovering ways to create thin films of chemicals, some only a few atoms thick, that can do many things no other substances can. Some are semiconductors that can be made into computer chips. Others have special magnetic properties that let them act as memory storage systems. Others are superconductors–they carry electric current without any resistance. And some thin films can make a knife edge as hard as a diamond.