Science News articles from April 2009

Science News archives from April 2009

Planck mission will help achieve Planck's mission.(FROM THE EDITOR)(Max Planck )
April 11, 2009... When Max Planck enrolled at the University of Munich in 1874, he planned to study mathematics. But then physics caught his attention and he changed his major, despite a professor's warning that everything worth knowing about physics had already...

Scientific observations.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Philip Streich on scientific research funding)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... "I am hopeful that the stimulus money allocated to scientific research will provide considerably greater funding and career opportunities for young scientists. This is essential to motivate more of us to commit our lives to science, to boldly...

Science past: from the issue of April 11, 1959.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Peking Man)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... SCIENTISTS URGED TO DIG FOR SPECIMENS OF PEKING MAN--Give up the loss of the bones of ancient Peking Man, one of man's earliest ancestors, as a perfect crime, and start digging for new specimens of this Pleistocene forebear. This is the advice...

Science future.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)(Calendar)
April 11, 2009... April 22-26 Annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology to be held in Atlanta. See www.saa.org April 29 Psychologist Daniel Levitin and Grammy Award-winner Rosanne Cash speak at What Is Music to Your Ears? The Science...

Science & the public.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] March 24 marked the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. A series of blogs from senior editor Janet Raloff recounts the disaster's continuing aftermath (photo below) at www....

Molecules.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)
April 11, 2009... Organic chemists have gained unprecedented control over making molecules based on the versatile aromatic ring structures. See "Helping molecules reach meta."

Life.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(800 bird species are endangered)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... The U.S. secretary of the interior announced that nearly a third of the country's 800 bird species are endangered, threatened or in significant decline. Read "U.S. bird populations in decline, report says."

Science stats: grantees get older.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)
April 11, 2009... Mean age of all principal investigators receiving a major NIH research grant and mean age of first-time recipients, 1970-2005 [GRAPHIC OMITTED]

Firsts.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Pea aphids )(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... Pea aphids have carried the buddy system to the extreme. To give a symbiotic bacterium living inside them a helping hand, the insects have borrowed two genes from former bacterial residents, a team reports online March 10 in BMC Biology. The...

Dissing a loaded label for some unicellular life: prominent biologist calls 'prokaryote' outdated term.(STORY ONE)(Norman Pace )
April 11, 2009... Norman Pace has a problem with prokaryotes. It's not that Pace has anything against the organisms themselves. The microbiologist and RNA scientist from the University of Colorado at Boulder has made a career of studying microorganisms....

Public tantrums defeat monkey mothers, too: bystanders make macaques more likely to give in to baby.(Life)
April 11, 2009... Baby screams. Onlookers glower. Mom gives in--even when she's a monkey. Rhesus macaque mothers are about twice as likely to let a howling infant have its way during very public tantrums than during more private moments, says Stuart Semple...

Goo gives eels the right buoyancy.(Life)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Getting stats on elusive glass eels (left) has always been a slippery task. These eel larvae consist mostly of a jellylike matrix covered by a thin sheath of muscle, making them transparent. In fact, for centuries...

Tiny crystals in Australian rocks suggest earlier debut for oxygen: hematite hints photosynthesis began by 3.46 billion years ago.(Earth)
April 11, 2009... Tiny crystals of iron oxide in ancient Australian rocks offer evidence that the Earth's atmosphere held significant amounts of oxygen far earlier than previously thought, a new study suggests. Large quantities of oxide minerals in rocks...

Clues in soil may warn of hot spells: satellite data could improve forecasts of regional effects.(Earth)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... Satellite observations of soil moisture, combined with regional climate models, could help scientists better predict the size and scope of future heat waves. One of the most devastating heat waves in recent years struck Europe in 2003 (SN:...

Plants reveal pollen-luring secrets: molecules of attraction identified in the wishbone flower.(Molecules)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... For more than a century, researchers have marveled at how pollen creeps down into a plant, growing a tube that twists and turns to reach the target ovary. But the nature of the siren song guiding this descent remained a mystery until now. For...

Light could heal material wounds: chitosan-related compound allows coating to repair itself.(Molecules)
April 11, 2009... Sunshine may not cure all ills, but it could offer a quick fix for a scratched car. Scientists have used a substance from the shells of shrimp to create a new material that repairs itself when exposed to ultraviolet light. The properties of the...

Gradual peanut exposure shows promise as an allergy treatment: study shows some children can overcome their symptoms.(Body & Brain)(Report)
April 11, 2009... WASHINGTON -- Very gradual introduction of peanuts into the diet--starting with less than 1/1,000th of a peanut a day--may prevent allergic reactions to peanuts in some children, a new study finds. But the bit-by-bit strategy takes time and may...

Organ rejection detection.(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... Scientists have found a signature of organ rejection that could help detect and treat it before transplanted organs sustain damage, a team reports online March 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Manikkam Suthanthiran of...

Cytomegalovirus vaccine.(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... An experimental vaccine is effective half the time in stopping cytomegalovirus infection in women of child-bearing age, Robert Pass of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and colleagues report in the March 19 New England Journal of...

Shallower brain stimulation.(Parkinson's disease)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... Getting a move on is difficult for people with Parkinson's disease. Deep brain stimulation has helped some patients, but no one was sure exactly how it worked. A study published online March 19 in Science shows that the technique exerts its...

Mars may host salty reservoirs: brines could force physicists to rethink planet's history.(Atom & Cosmos)(Report)
April 11, 2009... The Phoenix Mars Lander has been entombed in ice since November, but the salty tale it has told endures. The surprisingly high concentration of perchlorate salts found in the Martian polar soil last year--as much as a few percent by...

Team spots waves that heat corona: find supports theory explaining why sun's atmosphere sizzles.(Atom & Cosmos)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... Magnetic waves theorized to transfer heat from the surface of the sun to its outer atmosphere have been directly observed for the first time, a team reports in the March 20 Science. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Physicists have long wondered...

Exotic state of matter shows up in ultracold gas of rubidium atoms: supersolid acts like a solid and superfluid simultaneously.(Physics)(Report)
April 11, 2009... Hallmarks of an exotic, predicted state of matter called a supersolid have been spotted in a gas of ultracold rubidium atoms. In the same matter, researchers found signs of the seemingly disparate properties of both solidity and superfluidity,...

Quantum dots foe to algae.(MEETING NOTES)(nanomaterials)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... Nanomaterials keep slacks stainfree and sunscreens clear. But nanoparticles may also wreak havoc when they get into the environment. Priyanka Bhattacharya of Clemson University in South Carolina and her colleagues reported March 16 that quantum...

Glass molecules twinkle.(MEETING NOTES)(melting glass)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... High-resolution images of glasses solidifying may help explain the precise conditions causing glassy materials to melt, reported Richard Wool of the University of Delaware in Newark on March 17. As glass goes from molten liquid to cool solid,...

Two cultures grasp music's universal feeling: key, tempo clue Mafa in to emotion in Western tunes.(Humans)
April 11, 2009... Cameroon's Mafa farmers don't know U2 from YouTube, and that's how they like it. So it comes as a scientific revelation that, according to a new study, these Africans who are largely cocooned from Western culture recognize expressions of...

Peking Man ups his age.(Humans)(Brief article)
April 11, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Peking Man has suddenly gotten much older. The Homo erectus fossils from China's Zhoukoudian cave system that are referred to collectively as Peking Man date to as early as 780,000 years ago, roughly 200,000 years...

Planck by Planck: mapping the earliest moments of time.(birth of the universe)(Cover story)
April 11, 2009... Pssst! Want to see the birth of the universe? Astronomers say it's not a scam. The launch of the European Space Agency's Planck mission, set for late April or early May, will put into orbit a new tool--the microwave equivalent of...

Building beauty: deconstructing flowers yields the secrets of petals, scents and hue.
April 11, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Flowers are essentially variations on a single theme: Come hither. Instead of lipstick and lace, flowers advertise with vivid petals and ultraviolet stripes. Some plants offer a legitimate exchange of goods--visitors...

Urban heat: cities sizzle as more people move in.
April 11, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In life, as in boxing, the combined effects of a one-two punch are often more devastating than either blow alone. Imagine, then, the devastation from a triple whammy that city dwellers might suffer this century as...

Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 11, 2009... Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond Meg Daley Olmert [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A nursing mother, a pet lover and a horse in a cavalry charge have at least one thing in common: bloodstreams full of oxytocin,...

Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 11, 2009... Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities Ian Stewart [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What positive integer is equal to its own Scrabble score when spelled out in full? Stewart, a mathematician at the University of...

Bookshelf.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 11, 2009... Before Sudoku: The World of Magic Squares Seymour S. Block and Santiago A. Tavares [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Fascination with sudoku puzzles is not new. Oxford Univ., 2009, 239 p., $14.95. The Empathy Gap: Building Bridges to the...

Life in Space: Astrobiology for Everyone.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 11, 2009... Life in Space: Astrobiology for Everyone Lucas John Mix [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] How the search for extraterrestrial life helps us understand Earth. Harvard Univ., 2009, 344 p., $29.95.

Bracing for global climate change is a local challenge.(COMMENT)
April 11, 2009... Weather and climate extremes have been affecting people around the world, from recent droughts in China and Australia to strong storms in Asia to a cold wave in large parts of Europe and the United States--all within a month of the World...

Science stats: more schooling, more exercise.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)
April 25, 2009... Percentage of U.S. adults 25 or older who reported regular leisure-time exercise, by education level, 1997 versus 2007 [GRAPHIC OMITTED]

5 million.(Body & Brain)
April 25, 2009... Number of people infected with cholera each year.

100 thousand.(Body & Brain)
April 25, 2009... Number of people who die of cholera each year.