Why fewer women than men seek tenure-track jobs in science, surprising findings about Mercury from the MESSENGER spacecraft, and some new thinking about memory are among the issues addressed in the Advances section of Scientific American's June issue. For readers interested in learning more about any of these developments, a selected list of further resources follows below. – Rose Eveleth
The Motherhood Gap: Williams and Ceci’s paper in the Proceedings of the Nataional Academy of Sciences suggested that discrimination was less responsible than people thought for low levels of women in science. Scientific American covered the news when it came out as well.
Fire and Water: For more photographs and information about MESSENGER’s trip to Mercury, visit the site that NASA has dedicated to it.
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Microbial Mules: David H. Gracias’s lab webpage has resources for understanding how they attach particles to microbes. And for a sense of just how small those particles are, here’s an interactive scale of the entire universe.
Thar She Blows: The Working Group of the European Seismological Commission’s website has more resources to learn about their theory that ruptures cause low frequency earthquakes surrounding volcanoes. The alternate theory, that columns of magma cause the tremors, was published here, in Nature.
Old Neurons, New Tricks: Tonegawa’s study is available behind a pay wall here in the journal Cell.
When Cockroach Legs Dance: Greg Gage helped to found Backyard Brains, a company that builds fun interactive experiments for kids. You can see all their tricks at their website here.
Happy Birthday Electron: For more about how the electron was discovered, check out the American Institute of Physics’ web exhibit.
The Case of the Traveling Salesman: For more about the Traveling Salesman problems (including some games!) visit this website.
Primeval Precipitation: The paper, published in Nature Geoscience, is available behind a pay wall here. And if you want images of raindrops fossilized in rocks, NASA has you covered.
Go with the Flow: The Storm Surge database has all kinds of information about where water surges up during hurricanes and other storms.
It’s Not “Like Growing Grass”: A paper in Science in March 2012 by Dr. Cotsarelis details how prostaglandin might be the key to slowing, and perhaps stopping, hair loss.
Lice Don’t Lie: Read the whole blog here, at Scientific American’s blog network. And if you can’t get enough of lemurs, consider a visit to the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina.
Beautiful Mutants: The rest of the story about mutants is on the Observations blog. Scientific American has covered Van Gogh’s work before, and how science can help preserve it.
