Th3 King

A LEG TO STAND ON   Scientists have tackled the question of how a biggish bird can balance, and apparently nap, on just one skinny leg. CLINT /ISTOCKPHOTO A question flamingo researchers get asked all the time — why the birds stand on one leg — may need rethinking. The bigger puzzle may be why flamingos bother standing on two. Balance aids built into the birds’ basic anatomy  allow for a one-legged stance that demands little muscular effort , tests find. This stance is so exquisitely stable that a bird sways less to keep itself upright when it appears to be dozing than when it’s alert with eyes open, two Atlanta neuromechanists report May 24 in  Biology Letters . “Most of us aren’t aware that we’re moving around all the time,” says Lena Ting of Emory University, who measures what’s called postural sway in standing people as well as in animals. Just keeping the human body vertical demands constant sensing and muscular correction ...

Image copyright GETTY IMAGES Image caption Studies suggest that the deaths of 1.6 million people a year in China are linked to air quality Airborne dust is normally seen as an environmental problem, but the lack of it is making air pollution over China considerably worse. A new study suggests less dust means more solar radiation hits the land surface, which reduces wind speed. That lack of wind in turn leads to an accumulation of air pollution over heavily populated parts of China. The researchers found that reduced dust levels cause a 13% increase in human-made pollution in the region. Sands from the Gobi Hundreds of millions of people across China continue to be impacted by air pollution from factories and coal-fired power plants. Studies suggest that the  dirty air contributes to 1.6 million deaths a year , about 17% of all mortalities. But this new research says that the human-induced pollution is being made worse or better by naturally occurring dust that blows...