Science News articles from April 2002

Science News archives from April 2002

Hot cereal: rice reveals bumper crop of genes. (This Week).(rice genome deciphered)(Brief Article)
April 6, 2002... For about a third of the world's population, rice equals life. The cereal provides more than half the daily calories that these people consume. In the April 5 Science, two research groups report that they have independently deciphered...

Osmium is forever: rare metal's strength humbles mighty diamond's. (This Week).(Brief Article)
April 6, 2002... In a surprising overturn, the lustrous, blue-white element osmium has beaten diamond in a test of compressibility. Not used much today, osmium has been incorporated into alloys for fountain-pen tips and phonograph needles. Diamond still...

Night patrol for tired cops: police lose sleep over workday hassles. (This Week).(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
April 6, 2002... You need to be well-rested and alert to catch criminals and uphold the law. However, many of the public servants charged with these duties suffer from insomnia and other serious sleep problems, according to a new study. Among big-city...

Lamprey allure: females rush to males' bile acid. (This Week).(Great Lakes water pest)(Brief Article)
April 6, 2002... A champion sex molecule has turned up in an analysis of sea lampreys, and it may inspire new ways to defend trout and other Great Lakes fish against the invading blood suckers. Long and skinny, the adolescent sea lamprey goes through a...

Scrambled drugs: transgenic chickens could lay golden eggs. (This Week).(using genetically altered animals to produce pharmaceutical agents)(Brief Article)
April 6, 2002... Medications of the future may be made to order--short order from the griddle, that is. Scientists have genetically engineered chickens so that they produce foreign proteins in eggs. This is an important step toward the goal of routinely...

Blood vessel poisoning: arsenic narrows artery that feeds brain. (This Week).(Brief Article)
April 6, 2002... New research suggests that drinking arsenic-laden water can produce dangerous narrowing in the carotid artery, which channels blood through the neck to the brain. The newly identified arsenic risk joins a slew of health problems, including...

A field of diminutive daisies. (This Week).(carbon nanotubes)(Brief Article)
April 6, 2002... This dainty-looking floral display is actually a field of thousands of hardy carbon nanotubes--carbon atoms arranged in tough cylinders, each just 20 to 30 nanometers in diameter. Each petal consists of horizontal nanotubes and each center, of...

Guessing secrets: applying mathematics to the efficient delivery of Internet content.
April 6, 2002... Even on uneventful days, traffic on the Internet can sometimes stutter to a crawl. It gets much worse when millions of people go online at the same time to view the latest images from a Mars expedition, download a trailer for an upcoming Star...

Aerial war against disease: satellite tracking of epidemics is soaring.(fighting vector-borne disease)
April 6, 2002... Imagine this: It's the height of summer a decade from now, and stifling heat blankets New York City. A hidden foe has lurked out of sight for many months, and authorities are on high alert. The streets are deserted, Central Park is sealed,...

Clotting protein hinders nerve repair. (Biomedicine).(fibrin)(Brief Article)
April 6, 2002... A protein that helps keep a person from bleeding to death when cut or bruised also slows repair of nerve damage that results from injuries, according to a study with mice. Wirelike nerve-cell extensions called axons run throughout the...

Noble gases and uranium get cozy. (Chemistry).(Brief Article)
April 6, 2002... Noble gases are notorious for their extreme disinterest in bonding with other elements. For this reason, scientists have had to work hard to force gases such as argon into stable compounds (SN: 8/26/00, p. 132). Scientists have now created...

Real pandas do handstands. (Biology).(giant panda may huse handstand to send warning)(Brief Article)
April 6, 2002... A giant panda that upends itself into a handstand may be sending a message that it's one big bamboo-thrasher and not to be messed with. Adult pandas roam mostly by themselves, so the scents they leave behind play a major role in...

A tasty discovery about the tongue. (Biomedicine).(taste receptor specific to glutamates)(Brief Article)
April 6, 2002... Over the past few years, taste researchers have identified various molecules on the tongue that respond to bitter and sweet substances. They've now found another so-called taste receptor, one that responds to almost all of the 20 amino acids...

Satellites discover new Arctic islands. (Earth Science).(Brief Article)
April 6, 2002... Imagine the thrill of exploring Arctic regions, discovering new lands, and staking a claim on history--all without risking frostbite. Danish researchers did just that when they analyzed a series of radar observations of the area that...

Stone Age Siberians move up in time. (Archaeology).(Brief Article)
April 6, 2002... More than 30 years ago, Russian investigators dug up the remains of several human camps situated along the Kamchatka River in eastern Siberia and dated them to as early as 14,000 years ago. These ancient settlements, dubbed the Ushki sites,...

New World hunters get a reprieve. (American Pre-History).(Clovis people likely not responsible for extinction of prehistoric animals)(Brief Article)
April 6, 2002... Many North American mammal species died out around 11,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the arrival of humans on the continent. Some scientists contend that these so-called Clovis people, who made deadly spear points out of stone, hunted...

Backyard Pets: Activities for Exploring Wildlife Close to Home. (Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest).
April 6, 2002... BACKYARD PETS: Activities for Exploring Wildlife Close to Home CAROL A. AMATO With the activities detailed in this guide, children discover how different species of fireflies communicate and how snails eat. They also learn how crickets...

Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax". (Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest).
April 6, 2002... BAD ASTRONOMY: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax" PHILIP PLAIT At the moment of the vernal equinox, it is possible to stand an egg on end and have it balance perfectly. By Plait's estimation,...

El Nino: Unlocking the Secrets of the Master Weather-Maker. (Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest).
April 6, 2002... EL NINO: Unlocking the Secrets of the Master Weather-Maker J. MADELEINE NASH A few years ago, El Nino was big news. This occasional, disruptive warming of Pacific waters affected weather patterns around the globe, causing unusual...

Political Numeracy: Mathematical Perspectives on Our Chaotic Constitution. (Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest).
April 6, 2002... EL NINO: Unlocking the Secrets of the Master Weather-Maker MICHAEL I. MEYERSON How do the logical paradoxes revealed in Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem explain Kenneth Star's investigation of President Clinton? How does chaos...

Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are. (Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest).
April 6, 2002... SYNAPTIC SELF: How Our Brains Become Who We Are JOSEPH LEDOUX In LeDoux's last book, The Emotional Brain, he discussed the biological foundation of memory and emotion. In Synaptic Self, he picks up where he left off and explores the...

Rough treatment. (Letters).
April 6, 2002... Shame on you. "It's a rough world" (SN: 2/2/02, p. 75) on the importance of fractals in earth sciences never mentioned the "father" of fractals, the Polish-French scientist Benoit Mandelbrot, nor Christopher Scholz, the solid-earth scientist of...

Odor readers. (Letters).
April 6, 2002... My olfactory sense was alerted while pregnant but stayed on guard ("Women whiff men in sniff proficiency," SN: 2/16/02, p. 110). After 7 years, it's sharper than ever. I can smell the minutest scents, which means my taste buds are equally...

Dropped the ball? (Letters).
April 6, 2002... You missed the papers that describe our experiments that produce ball lightning in our lab ("Anatomy of a lightning ball," SN: 2/9/02, p. 87). We use a lightning-arc-producing apparatus. CLINT SEWARD, ELECTRON POWER SYSTEMS, ACTON, MASS....

Vanquishing a virus; new drugs attack herpes infections.(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... Best known for intermittently producing embarrassing sores on the mouth and genitals, herpes simplex virus (HSV) is more dangerous than most people realize. The virus can blind and even kill people with weak immune systems, such as newborns,...

The DNA divide: chimps, people differ in brain's gene activity.(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... People and chimpanzees are almost identical when it comes to their DNA sequences, a sure sign of close evolutionary ties. A new study suggests that the distinctive looks and thinking styles of these two primate groups derive from the...

Gamma-ray burst: a black hole is born.(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... Gamma-ray bursts, the most violent cosmic explosions, are the birth announcements for black holes. Several new reports support this increasingly popular notion, but they disagree on how and when the black holes are produced. According to...

Steely glaze: layered electrolytes control corrosion.(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... Metals may someday rely on gossamer guardians. Ultrathin organic coatings offer a new way to slow the corrosion of steel, recent experiments suggest. Salt and moisture catalyze corrosive reactions of oxygen with metals. Microscopic defects...

Molding atoms; using a tiny template to make tinier structures.(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... With the help of a molecular mold composed of exactly 188 atoms, researchers have been able to impose textures at an even smaller atomic scale on a metal surface. The structures created--strips of copper exactly two atoms wide by seven...

Toxic tools: frogs down under pack their own poison.(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... For years, researchers demonstrated repeatedly that poisonous frogs don't make their own toxic chemicals. Instead, the scientists found, a frog obtains these skin compounds by ingesting arthropods that contain them. Now, researchers of the...

Globin family grows: blood-protein relative is in all tissues.(cytoglobin's function still unknown)(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... The blood protein hemoglobin and its relative, myoglobin, carry and store life-giving oxygen in many animals. Researchers long thought these complex proteins, with their unique fold, were the only two globins in vertebrates. Other globins had...

Climate upsets: big model predicts many new neighbors.(how global climate change affects animal communities)(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... For wildlife, the biggest wallop from global climate change may not be species extinctions but major shifts in the make-up of creature communities. That's the prediction from the most ambitious application yet of the computer model for...

The true sweet science: researchers develop a taste for the study of sugars.(various roles of sugar in the body)
April 13, 2002... "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down," sings Julie Andrews in the popular Disney movie Mary Poppins. The musical nanny doesn't seem to realize that sometimes the sugar is the medicine. Consider the blood-thinner heparin, the...

Stemming the tide; killer technologies target invading stowaways.(ballast water responsible for many marine pests)(Cover Story)
April 13, 2002... Zebra mussels. Green crabs. Sea lampreys. Ruffe and round gobies. These are just a few of the troubles that have swum forth from the bellies of oceangoing ships. Those species and scores of other once-foreign aquatic organisms now besiege U.S....

Journal disowns transgene report. (Agriculture).('Science' retracts report on transgenic corn)(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... Oops. The journal Nature says it shouldn't have published a report about genetically engineered corn leaking exotic genes into traditional races of the crop in Mexico. In the Nov. 29, 2001, edition of the prestigious journal, David Quist...

Web site debuts on junior high science. (Science & Society).(errors in textbooks posted)(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... Last year, a provocative study of the 12 most widely used physical science textbooks for middle schools and junior high schools gained renown for demonstrating that all of the books were riddled with errors of fact and failures of presentation...

Immune cells carry concealed weapons. (Biology).(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... For decades, immunologists thought they knew how bacteria-killing cells called neutrophils finished off the microbes they engulfed: Through a so-called respiratory burst, the cells attack bacteria inside them with highly reactive oxygen...

Pulse pressure linked to dialysis death rate. (Biomedicine).(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... A high reading for pulse pressure--the difference between the two numbers in a blood pressure reading--may increase risks for people on kidney dialysis, according to a new analysis of clinical records. The average pulse pressure is usually...

Trees dim the light on spring flowers. (Biology).(blocked sun limits growth)(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... A quirk of northern forests may shorten the time that wildflowers have in early spring to soak up bright sunlight reaching the forest floor. They harvest light for making seeds this year and for next year's initial phases of growth. All too...

Diluted smallpox vaccine is potent. (Biomedicine).(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... For anyone concerned that terrorists might use the dreaded smallpox virus as a weapon, there was a double dose of good news last month. First, two studies led by investigators at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in...

Do your bit to fight toxic pool pollution. (Environment).(showering before a swim minimizes harmful byproducts)(Brief Article)
April 13, 2002... Ever wonder why swim centers ask users to shower before entering the pool? The standard argument is that dirt, including flecks of dead skin, can react with the water's chlorine and limit how much of the chemical is available to kill germs....

The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason, and Byron's Daughter.
April 13, 2002... BENJAMIN WOOLLEY Born of the fleeting marriage between the rational-minded Annabella Milbanke and the rebellious poet Lord Byron, Augusta Ada Byron was destined to live a life betwixt the polarities of her time. Ada grew up during the...

Distant Wanderers: the Search for Planets Beyond the Solar System.
April 13, 2002... BRUCE DORMINEY Some are big; some are small. Some are searingly hot; others are abysmally cold. Some follow stable, circular orbits; others follow wildly elliptical paths. They are the planets that lurk beyond the realm of our own solar...

The Little Book of Planet Earth.
April 13, 2002... ROLF MEISSNER How did life on our planet evolve? HOW old is Earth? How was our solar system formed and, with it, our planet? These are big questions, but the answers are found in this small book that gives broad insights into earth...

Racing the Antelope: What Animals Can Teach Us About Running and Life.
April 13, 2002... BERND HEINRICH A runner all his life, Heinrich's interest in other "endurance athlete species" took hold after he decided to race in the North American 100-kilometer championship. In an effort to improve his performance, he began to...

Science Experiments with Sound and Music.
April 13, 2002... SHAR LEVINE AND LESLIE JOHNSTONE Get good vibrations as you work through these science projects devoted to the nature of sound. Using materials commonly found around the house, students learn how sound moves, how animals such as bats and...

Consuming question. (Letters).
April 13, 2002... In "The hunger hormone?" (SN: 2/16/02, p. 107), there is a graph showing sharp peaks of ghrelin at mealtimes and a rapid drop-off after the meal is eaten. There is also a peak during the night, but there is no meal responsible for the drop-off....

Pie in the face? (Letters).
April 13, 2002... "A fair share of the pie" (SN: 2/16/02, p. 104) indicates that the researchers were surprised that the participants from "traditional societies" acted in some mode rather than pure self-interest. This isn't surprising if you accept the notion...

Today, complex numbers have such widespread practical use. (Mathematical Mysteries).('An Imaginary Tale')
April 13, 2002... from electrical engineering to aeronautics--that few people would expect the story behind their derivation to be filled with adventure and enigma. In An Imaginary Tale, Paul Nahin tells the 2,000-year-old history of one of mathematics' most...

Trigonometry has always been the black sheep of mathematics. (Mathematical Mysteries).('Trigonometric Delights')
April 13, 2002... Too advanced to be part of elementary math, yet too elementary for the higher branches of the profession, it has been looked upon as a glorified form of geometry, complicated by tedious computation. Nothing could be further from the truth....

The interest earned on a bank account. (Mathematical Mysteries).('e: The Story of a Number')
April 13, 2002... The interest earned on a bank account, the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower, and the shape of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis are all intimately connected with the mysterious number e. In his informal and engaging history, Eli Maor portrays...

Feminized frogs: Herbicide disrupts sexual growth. (This Week).(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... At common environmental concentrations, the popular weed killer atrazine strips male frogs of a key hormone and turns some of them into hermaphrodites, according to new research. The finding raises concerns that the chemical may be contributing...

Older ancestors: primate origins age in new analysis. (This Week).(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... The evolutionary roots of primates, the group of mammals that gave rise to humans, are murky. Paleontologists generally think that the first primates appeared about 65 million years ago, whereas genetic analyses of the DNA from living primates...

Cosmic remodeling: Superwinds star in early universe. (This Week).(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... New measurements reveal that some of the earliest galaxies in the universe produced winds so forceful and persistent that they blew material from one galaxy to another. By redistributing some 20 percent of the ordinary, visible matter when...

Cardiac culprit: autopsies implicate C-reactive protein in fatal heart attacks. (This Week).(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... The blood chemical called C-reactive protein (CRP)--an indicator of inflammation--is elevated in many heart disease patients. A new study of people who died suddenly of various causes finds that those who succumbed to a heart attack had an...

European Union for Ants: supercolony reigns from Italy to Portugal. (This Week).(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... Researchers have documented the largest ant supercolony yet, a network of Argentine ant nests stretching at least 6,000 kilometers across Europe. It's "the largest cooperative unit ever recorded," says Laurent Keller of the University of...

Membrane mastery: nanosize silica speeds up sieve. (This Week).(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... When separating molecules from one another--whether to purify natural gas or clean wastewater--engineers and scientists usually use expensive techniques that require a lot of energy. A less expensive, environmentally friendly--though not always...

Big-eyed birds sing early songs: dawn chorus explained. (This Week).(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... As dawn breaks on a misty Welsh morning, the earliest birds to break into song are likely to include European robins, followed by blackbirds and song thrushes and then a plethora of other species as sunlight crowns the horizon. The last to join...

Strange Stars? Odd features hint at novel matter. (This Week).(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... Exotic forms of matter never observed before in the wild may have turned up in the remnants of two collapsed stars, according to new findings publicized last week by NASA. At an April 10 briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.,...

Deprived of darkness: the unnatural ecology of artificial light at night.(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... In 1988, physician and amateur moth enthusiast Kenneth D. Frank published a scientific paper that pulled together much of what researchers then knew about the consequences of artificial night-time lighting on moths. That paper is the closest...

Wild hair: the suddenly famous science of fur snagging.(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... It was a bad way to get famous. But if not for the scandal--inflamed headlines, outraged politicians, and rumors, rumors, rumors--the study of wildlife by analyzing stray tufts of their hair might never have gotten much public notice at all....

Folate cuts family risk of colon cancer. (Food & Nutrition).(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... Good nutrition, including regular intake of the vitamin folate, reduces one's risk of colon cancer. According to a 16-year study of nearly 90,000 women, the vitamin's protective effect is greatest among women whose families have been affected...

Motion of ice across Lake Vostok revealed. (Earth Science).(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... Lake Vostok, a vast freshwater lake locked in perpetual darkness beneath 4 kilometers of glacial ice in Antarctica, nevertheless harbors life. New measurements of the movement of the lake's overlying ice sheet could help scientists determine...

Maneless lions live one guy per pride. (Biology).(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... Lions in Kenya's Tsavo East National Park already stand out because the males there don't grow manes. Now an analysis of family life reveals another oddity: Unlike other lions, sizable clusters of Tsavo females live with a sole male lion. ...

Antibiotics don't seem to protect heart. (Biomedicine).(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... A report made public last month reinforced the idea that antibiotics can protect some people with cardiovascular disease against subsequent heart attacks, possibly by fighting an infection underlying the disease (SN: 3/16/02, p. 164). However,...

St. John's wort hinders cancer drug. (Chemotherapy).(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... St. John's wort, the popular herbal remedy for mild depression, lowers the effectiveness of a cancer-fighting drug, according to a study in the Netherlands. This previously unrecognized downside results from the herb's stimulation of an...

Compound attacks pancreatic cancer. (Biomedicine).(protein fragment can delay pancreatic cancer in mice)(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... Scientists in Japan have found that a protein fragment dubbed NK4 can stall the development of pancreatic cancer in mice. The researchers isolated NK4 in 1989 by taking apart a protein called hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), which normally...

Gene mutation tied to lung cancer. (Genetics).(gene on chromosome 19 may mutate in cases of lung adenocarcinoma)(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... Scientists have found a gene on chromosome 19 that's often mutated in people with lung adenocarcinoma, a kind of cancer responsible for about half of all lung tumors. The gene, called LKB1/STK11, was mutated in 8 of 24 lung adenocarcinoma...

Drug for dry mouth may prevent lung cancer. (Pharmaceuticals).(dry mouth preparation may deter lung lesions)(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... A drug that has been prescribed for 30 years for a condition known as dry mouth can also stymie the formation of precancerous lung lesions in cigarette smokers, particularly those who have quit. Solvay Pharma, a company based near Pads,...

Anatomy of a Rose: Exploring the Secret Life of Flowers.(Brief Article)
April 20, 2002... SHARMAN APT RUSSELL Often looked upon as just pretty faces, flowers nevertheless command an essential role in the botanical domain. Virtually every plant eaten by a person or animal relies on flowers for reproduction. Flowers have a place...

The Big Bang Theory: What It Is, Where It Came From, and Why It Works.
April 20, 2002... KAREN C. FOX Although many people are familiar with the moniker Big Bang theory, most aren't well-versed in the science behind it. Fox provides an accessible and engaging introduction to this explanation for the creation of the universe...

Buried Alive: the Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear.
April 20, 2002... JAN BONDESON In this compilation of macabre incidents taking place between the 18th and 20th centuries, Bondeson contends that premature burial was a common occurrence before there were scientific methods for confirming death. The...

Nature's Building Blocks: an A-Z Guide to the Elements.
April 20, 2002... JOHN EMSLEY From actinium to zirconium, this marvelous encyclopedia details all 115 elements of the periodic table to reveal the nature of each and its relationship to us. With the general reader in mind, Emsley infuses his text with lots...

Oceans: an Activity Guide for Ages 6-9.
April 20, 2002... NANCY F. CASTALDO Whether they live on Cape Cod or in Kansas City, children can learn about tides, sea turtles, tide pools, and many other elements of the ocean by reading these pages. Experiments illustrate how to mimic the Gulf Stream in...

Technically Speaking: Why All Americans Need to Know More about Technology.
April 20, 2002... GREG PEARSON AND A. THOMAS YOUNG, EDS. As this report states, most people in the United States have a poor understanding of the essential characteristics of technology necessary for making informed decisions on issues such as genetically...

Step on it, Rex. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
April 20, 2002... There is another mechanism besides muscle that gives energy to running and hopping animals ("No Olympian: Analysis hints T. rex ran slowly, if at all," SN: 3/2/02, p. 131). It enables such animals as kangaroos to run faster than their muscles...

Put out to pasture: strategy to prolong antibiotics' potency.(Brief Article)
April 27, 2002... The use of antibiotics to promote growth in farm animals hastens the end of their medical effectiveness, according to a new study. Using a mathematical model to probe the evolutionary dynamics of bacterial resistance to antibiotics,...

Risk factor: genetic defect hikes breast cancer threat.(Brief Article)
April 27, 2002... A mutation already linked to several types of cancer doubles the risk of breast cancer in a woman and multiplies men's slight risk even more dramatically, a new study finds. The protein encoded by the normal version of the gene called CHEK2...

Super wallops: tracking the origin of cosmic rays.(Brief Article)
April 27, 2002... When it comes to revving up subatomic particles, the heavens leave the biggest particle accelerator on Earth in the dust. Our galaxy abounds with charged particles carrying energies that are thousands to millions of times as high as those that...

The silent type: Pacific Northwest hit routinely by nonquakes.(Brief Article)
April 27, 2002... Once every 14 months or so, portions of coastal British Columbia and northwestern Washington State experience a slow ground motion that, if released all at once, would generate an earthquake measuring more than 6 on the Richter scale. ...

Deadly pickup: enzyme permits plague germ to ride in fleas.(Brief Article)
April 27, 2002... Acquisition of a gene that enables the plague bacterium to live inside blood-sucking fleas may have set the stage for the Black Death, a new study in the April 3 26 Science suggests. This plague epidemic killed an estimated 25 million people...

Attack of the ancestor: neandertals took a stab at violent assaults.(Brief Article)
April 27, 2002... Like a gruesome jigsaw puzzle, the pieced-together fragments of a 36,000-year-old Neandertal skull reveal a bony scar caused by a blow from a sharp tool or weapon, according to a new study. The Stone Age attack victim, probably a male in...

Self-sutures: new material knots up on its own.(Brief Article)
April 27, 2002... Researchers have used a new biodegradable material to make surgical sutures that knot and tighten themselves as they warm to body temperature. The new material could help surgeons working in tight spaces within the body, says Robert Langer...

Not-so-neutral neutron: clearer view of neutron reveals charged locales.(Brief Article)
April 27, 2002... Textbooks say the neutron has no electric charge, but physicists have long suspected that the particle is a more complicated beast. A new accelerator study is helping physicists see clearly an aspect of neutron structure they could only guess...