Science News articles from August 2003

Science News archives from August 2003

Strengthening the case for dark energy. (Repulsive Astronomy).
August 2, 2003... Astronomers have found new evidence for one of the strangest properties of the universe. A mysterious substance, dubbed dark energy, appears to be ripping the cosmos apart, causing the universe to expand at an ever-faster rate. The...

Modern treatment plants strip hormone from sewage. (Extracting Estrogens).
August 2, 2003... Reproductive hormones, both natural and the synthetic ones in contraceptive drugs, sometimes survive sewage treatment and turn up in the environment where they can affect wildlife. Modern sewage-treatment facilities, about half of those used in...

Taking turbulence models to a new level. (Fast Findings on Fluid Frenzy).
August 2, 2003... From blood spurting through hearts to winds buffeting cars, fluids swirl and tumble in complex ways that scientists struggle to understand. Now, a new means to efficiently depict fluid turbulence and to calculate its effects promises to...

Enzyme counters Alzheimer's-like snarls. (Untangling the Brain).
August 2, 2003... An enzyme prevents brain cells in aging mice from developing knots of proteins resembling those that are a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, scientists report. Known as Pin1, the enzyme could form the basis of new treatments for the...

Zinc links may inspire new materials. (Worm's Jaws Show Mettle).
August 2, 2003... Since biology excels at making strong and hard substances, such as bone, teeth, and seashells, scientists who design new materials often try to emulate nature's inventions. For Galen D. Stucky of the University of California, Santa Barbara and...

New thymus tissue jump-starts immune system in babies. (Transplant Hope).
August 2, 2003... Babies born without a thymus gland--and therefore bereft of a functioning immune system--are easy prey for disease-causing invaders. If untreated, this deficiency, called severe DiGeorge syndrome, is invariably fatal before a child's third...

Getting a speed boost from DNA. (Turbo Gene).(muscle physiology)
August 2, 2003... Whether you're better suited to run a marathon or a 100-meter sprint correlates with a gene called ACTN3, researchers find. The gene encodes the protein [alpha]-actinin-3, which functions in the so-called fast-twitch muscles. These muscles...

Air sickness: how microscopic dust particles cause subtle but serious harm.(air pollution)
August 2, 2003... On Oct. 26, 1948, a temperature inversion laid a blanket of cold, stagnant air over Donora, Pa., a tiny mill town on the Monongahela River. Over the next 5 days, the buildup of pollution cloaked the sun, sometimes restricting vision to just a...

Love the one you're with. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
August 2, 2003... Your short piece "Findings puncture self-esteem claims" (SN: 6/7/03, p. 365) didn't say how self-esteem was assessed. Overdeveloped egotism is often a compensatory phenomenon in individuals with low self-esteem and can falsely present as high...

Corrections.(Correction Notice)
August 2, 2003... Species names were misspelled in two articles. In "Herbal Lottery " (SN: 6/7/03, p. 359), the plant should have been called Echinacea angustifolia (not augustifolia). In the sidebar of "Phages Behaving Badly" (SN: 7/12/03, p. 27) the bacterium...

Old worms, new aging genes: biologists look into DNA for the secrets of long life.
August 2, 2003... For more than a decade, Cynthia Kenyon has watched microscopic worms of the species Caenorhabditis elegans live far longer than they should. She has seen mutant strains of this worm, which is normally dead and gone after a mere 2 or 3 weeks,...

Antiglare eye black is better than tape. (Health Physics).(Brief Article)
August 2, 2003... Baseball and football players have claimed for decades that swiping black grease under their eyes helps them peer into a sunny sky to catch a ball. In recent years, the smudges have given way to tidier patches of black tape. Brian DeBroff...

Anthrax toxin curbs immune cells. (Biomedicine).(Brief Article)
August 2, 2003... Scientists have revealed yet another way in which the bacterium that causes anthrax disarms the immune system. The microbe, Bacillus anthracis, produces a molecular complex that's called lethal toxin known to interrupt a cascade of signals...

The secret appetite of cleaner wrasses. (Fish).(Brief Article)
August 2, 2003... The little helpers known as cleaner fish, which nibble parasites off larger reef fish, actually prefer to nibble their clients. Earlier experiments had already caught cleaner fish apparently cheating, taking nips of flesh and skin-covering...

Some female birds prefer losers. (Quails).(Japanese quail)(Brief Article)
August 2, 2003... When a female Japanese quail watches confrontations between two males, she later tends to choose the loser over the champ. Studies of male dashes in other animals, such as Siamese fighting fish, have generally found that females prefer...

Maybe what Polly wants is a new toy. (Parrots).(Brief Article)
August 2, 2003... Changing the toys frequently in a parrot's cage may reduce the bird's tendency to fear new things. Bird keepers grow anxious as their birds fidget, sometimes plucking their own feathers, says Rebecca Fox of the University of California, Davis....

Why do two-sex geckos triumph? (Lizards).(Brief Article)
August 2, 2003... The smell of one invading species of gecko has a mysterious influence on the activity of the defending species, but the voodoo doesn't work on first exposure, reports a researcher in Hawaii. The Hawaiian Islands and many other islands in...

The Empty Ocean.(Book Review)
August 2, 2003... RICHARD ELLIS Ellis, a renowned marine illustrator and sea lover, explores the plight of the world's oceans and discusses what can be done to restore their bounty. He reports that overharvesting of the oceans has gone on for millennia....

The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey.(Book Review)
August 2, 2003... SPENCER WELLS Advances in genetics help us understand who we are. Geneticist Wells explains how his field also helps define where we came from. He presents evidence supporting the notion that modern humans didn't descend from Neandertals....

Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind.(Book Review)
August 2, 2003... RANDALL WHITE This rather scholarly yet beautiful book surveys images and objects that run through 40,000 years of prehistoric art. With an anthropologist's eye, White places these discoveries in context, discussing the possible uses and...

Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics.(Book Review)
August 2, 2003... JOHN DERBYSHIRE Nearly 150 years ago, Bernhard Riemann posed a deceptively simple question to his peers at the Berlin Academy: Is there a general rule for figuring out how many prime numbers there are up to a given number? Three years ago,...

The Water Garden Encyclopedia: The Ultimate Guide to Designing, Constructing, Planting, and Maintaining Garden Ponds and Water Features.(Book Review)
August 2, 2003... PHILIP SWINDELLS Loaded with color photographs and illustrations and offering clear, step-by-step directions, this guide is a complete resource for creating a formal reflecting pool, fishpond, canal, or even a small water feature on a...

What? What? What? Astounding Weird Wonderful and Just Plain Unbelievable Facts.(Book Review)
August 2, 2003... LYN THOMAS AND DIANNE EASTMAN "Your body is made up of around 100 billion living cells so tiny that thousands of them could be squeezed onto the period at the end of this sentence." So begins this tour of things you would have never...

Vocal on herbals. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
August 2, 2003... I find the ideas promulgated in "Herbal Lottery: What's on a dietary supplement's label may not be what's in the bottle" (SN: 6/7/03, p. 359) deeply disturbing. The idea of pulling out a couple of chemicals and standardizing them is a turning...

Nonstick Sticklers? (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
August 2, 2003... "Sticky Situation: Nonstick surfaces can turn toxic at high heat" (SN: 6/7/03, p. 355) noted that "... with food in it, a pan will never reach temperatures that produce toxic PTFE-derived gases." However, to fry items like eggs and pancakes,...

Ebola vaccine works fast in monkey test.(Virus Shield)
August 9, 2003... A one-shot version of a vaccine against Ebola fever provides protection after just 1 month, tests in monkeys show. If it proves safe to use in people, the fast-acting vaccine, deployed promptly, might help contain future Ebola outbreaks,...

Horse and mule clones cross the finish line.(Winning Bet)
August 9, 2003... Given Funny Cide's thrilling attempt at the Triple Crown and Seabiscuit's reign at the movies, this is arguably the year of the horse. Cloning researchers would agree. Following hard on the hooves of news that a U.S. research team had cloned a...

Fossil DNA analysis yields surprise.(Three Species No Moa?)(wingless birds)
August 9, 2003... Analyses of genetic material from the fossils of large flightless birds called moas suggest that three types of the extinct birds may not be separate species after all. Moas weren't merely flightless; they're the only known birds with no...

Men's DNA supports recent settlement of the Americas.(New World Newcomers)(genetic differences between Central Asian, Native American men)
August 9, 2003... Genetic differences among the Y chromosomes of Central Asian and Native American men bolster the argument that people first reached the Americas less than 20,000 years ago, according to two groups of anthropologists. The new data also support...

Ocean predators have diversity hot spots.(Shark Serengeti)
August 9, 2003... The first search for oceanic spots of exceptional diversity in predators has turned up marine versions of the teeming Serengeti plains and Amazon rain forests. Records from fishing boats highlight four areas showing unusual diversity in...

Marking original documents with a lick of gloss.(Shining True)(anti-forgery technology Glossmark from Xerox)
August 9, 2003... In the age of desktop publishing, resourceful forgers can readily produce convincing copies of documents such as checks and prescriptions. Now, designers of laser color printers are fighting back with a new antiforgery technology. ...

Scientists uncover basis of material oddball.(Electric Foam)(piezoelectric materials)
August 9, 2003... Some crystals change their size when exposed to an electric current and also generate electric signals when squeezed. These so-called piezoelectric materials, which are usually ceramic, appear widely in ink-jet printer heads, microphones, and...

Emergency gardening: labs step in to help conserve the rarest plants on earth.(Cover Story)
August 9, 2003... There's a rescue helicopter, but it doesn't actually land on the roof of the hospital for the world's most endangered plants. Rather, the tissue culture lab at the National Tropical Botanical Garden on Kauai sits in a trim red bungalow with a...

Layered approach: a simple technique for making thin coatings is poised to shift from curiosity to commodity.(layer-by-layer assembly)
August 9, 2003... Wrap an apple in Yasa-sheet and it will stay fresh for weeks. So says Semei Shiratori of Keio University in Yokahama, Japan, who makes this high-tech plastic for preserving fruits and vegetables. To be sure, it's a humble product. But it may be...

Gluing building blocks with geometry.(Physics)
August 9, 2003... Using simple blocks with shapes like cubes or hourglasses, researchers have found ways to construct strong panels with no fasteners securing most of the blocks. Such constructions remain intact even after losing up to half of their units, says...

Naps with stages spark learning.(Behavior)
August 9, 2003... Napping shows potential as a way to stimulate learning, at least for volunteers performing a laboratory task that requires visual discriminations. There's a catch, though, say psychologist Sara Mednick of Harvard University and her colleagues....

Chemical rings act as a minirotor.(Chemistry)(Brief Article)
August 9, 2003... Taking a step toward the creation of molecule-scale motors for equally tiny tasks, researchers have made rings of organic molecules on which one or two smaller chemical rings rotate like charms on a bracelet. In the version with two small...

Clot buster attached to red blood cells avoids complications.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
August 9, 2003... When a person is rushed to an emergency room with a heart attack or stroke, doctors often prescribe immediate infusions of tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA). The drug can dissolve clots blocking blood flow to the heart or brain. But...

For European lakes, how clean is clean enough?(Science And Society)
August 9, 2003... Decreases in water quality are often associated with modern farming practices, including the use of artificial fertilizers and the practice of keeping many animals in small areas. However, new research on lakes in Denmark suggests that...

A human migration fueled by dung?(Paleoecology)(Brief Article)
August 9, 2003... When people made their way from Asia to the Americas, the path they took may have been covered in dung. At the peak of the last ice age, when sea levels were low, a land bridge that's now submerged in many places connected what are now...

Large lake floods scoured New Zealand.(Earth Science)(Brief Article)
August 9, 2003... Portions of New Zealand's North Island, like many volcanic regions, have experienced immense floods when lakes filling the crater's of dormant volcanoes burst through craters' rims. Now, scientists analyzing signs of erosion in the area have...

Alpha and Omega: the Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe.(Book Review)
August 9, 2003... CHARLES SEIFE The author of Zero now turns his attention to the realm of cosmology, providing readers an overview of several Theories of Everything being postulated today. Beginning with some historical background, Seife explains how the...

Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries? Discourses on Godel, Magic Hexagrams, Little Red Riding Hood, and Other Mathematical and Pseudoscience Topics.(Book Review)
August 9, 2003... MARTIN GARDNER At age 89, Gardner continues to be one of the most prolific science writers. His works regularly appear in The Skeptical Inquirer, Scientific American, and the Los Angeles Times. This compendium of recent articles from those...

Galileo's Mistake: a New Look at the Epic Confrontation between Galileo and the Church.(Book Review)
August 9, 2003... WADE ROWLAND In a defining moment in modern Western culture, the inquisition convicted Galileo Galilei of heresy in 1633 Rowland argues that the trial centered less on Galileo's defense of the Copernican view of the solar system than on...

The Truth About Chronic Pain: Patients and Professionals on How to Face It, Understand It, Overcome It.(Book Review)
August 9, 2003... ARTHUR ROSENFELD With an estimated 25 million to 75 million sufferers, chronic pain has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. Yet Rosenfeld's research and first-hand experience tell him that pain management by health...

Weeds in My Garden: Observations on Some Misunderstood Plants.(Book Review)
August 9, 2003... CHARLES B. HEISER As a botanist, Heiser appreciates all plants--even those that most gardeners loathe. More than just an identification guide, Weeds in My Garden is a tribute to plants that most people call weeds. Heiser profiles 140...

Beyond ballistic.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 9, 2003... While the report of ballistic testing of bacteria is a fascinating study of bacterial survival ("Bulletproof bacteria" SN: 6/7/03, p. 366), I'd be more concerned about the effects of severe extremes of heat, cold, and vacuum on the survival of...

Gripping question.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 9, 2003... "Caught on Tape: Gecko-inspired adhesive is superstrong" (SN: 6/7/03, p. 356) reports that, wearing a gecko-inspired glove, "a person could dangle from the ceiling." How would that person let go? The microscopic hairs on a gecko's feet...

Aswirl where?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 9, 2003... "Oceans Aswirl" (SN: 6/14/03,p.375) says that Robert R. Leben of the University of Colorado operates a Web site that monitors the positions of Gulf of Mexico eddies, but it doesn't give the Web site. It would be most valuable to the millions of...

Strong evidence of galactic cannibalism.(Swallow Thy Neighbor)
August 16, 2003... It's a violent world out there, and many large galaxies have the corpses to prove it. These massive galaxies, including our own Milky Way, are surrounded by streams of gas and stars, the fossil remains of dwarf galaxies that they tore apart...

Modeling relief on the action of marijuana.(Switching Off Pain)
August 16, 2003... Scientists have long known that tetrahydracannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in marijuana, is an effective painkiller. But THC's kaleidoscopic effects, including sedation, giddiness, and paranoia, limit its use in medicine. Now,...

Photosynthetic bacteria bare their DNA.(Probing Ocean Depths)
August 16, 2003... Scientists call it the invisible forest, the immense mass of ocean-dwelling microorganisms--algae, bacteria, and plants known as phytoplankton--that perform photosynthesis as trees do. Converting light, water, and carbon dioxide into energy,...

Creatine pills may aid memory and cognition.(Brawny Brains)
August 16, 2003... The popular muscle-building supplement creatine can boost performance on mental tests. Students preparing for exams might benefit from taking creatine in much the way that some competitive athletes do, an Australian neurochemist suggests. ...

Climate change can slow ocean's absorption of carbon dioxide gas.(Saltier Water)
August 16, 2003... A decrease in precipitation over the Pacific Ocean just north of Hawaii in recent years has left the ocean there saltier and has diminished its capacity to soak up planet-warming carbon dioxide, a new analysis shows. Each month since the...

Mountain creatures prove extra-vulnerable.(Risky High Life)(climate changes lead to risks for animals)
August 16, 2003... Climate change may literally knock the top Off the world's terrestrial-animal populations, according to an Australian analysis. The species that have specialized in living at the heights of a particular mountain and occur nowhere else face...

Yeast adds new amino acids to its proteins.(Amending the Genetic Code)
August 16, 2003... With only ram exceptions, every organism constructs proteins from just 20 building blocks called amino acids. Recently, however, researchers modified Escherichia coli bacteria so that the single-celled organisms also make an alien amino acid...

Short e-mail chains reach targets worldwide.(Small World After All)
August 16, 2003... Six degrees of separation--the notion that every person on the planet can reach every other through a chain of about six social ties--has been borne out by the first large-scale study of social networks. The more than 24,000 e-mail users...

Blood sugar fix: can novel drugs rescue insulin-making cells?
August 16, 2003... Twenty years ago, scientists discovered an unusual substance made by cells lining the intestines. It would have gone unnoticed except for one remarkable quality: The compound, called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP1), acted as a hormone, inducing...

In search of a scientific revolution: controversial genius Stephen Wolfram presses onward.
August 16, 2003... Plenty of people claim to have theories that will revolutionize science. What's rare is for other scientists to take one of these schemes seriously. Yet that's what's happened since May 2002 when theoretical physicist Stephen Wolfram...

Near-death events take arresting turn.(Behavior)(Brief Article)
August 16, 2003... At least 1 in 10 people treated for cardiac arrest, a condition in which the heart stops pumping after it beats unusually quickly, describes mystical-seeming experiences that accompanied the brush with death, according to the largest survey to...

Icy telescope spots hot neutrinos.(Astronomy)(observation by the Arctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array II telescope)(Brief Article)
August 16, 2003... Scientists have unveiled the first glimpse of the sky by a telescope that detects high-energy neutrinos. By spotting extremely energized neutrinos that emerge from the universe's most violent events, such as collisions between black holes, the...

Everglades plant is he, then she, then he.(Sawgrass)(sawgrass)
August 16, 2003... The signature plant of the Everglades switches gender twice during a week of flowering, according to a Florida study. This synchronized sex change may prevent self-fertilization except in a reproductive emergency. Great sweeps of sawgrass...

Misunderstood stripes confuse individuality.(Lichens)(Brief Article)
August 16, 2003... A lichen may have seemed complicated enough back in the good old days, when biologists described it as a partnership between a fungal and an algal species. Lichenologists are now debating even trickier arrangements, such as the stripes of...

Next loosestrife is already loose.(Water Plants)(rotala rotundifolia)(Brief Article)
August 16, 2003... Water gardeners and aquarium enthusiasts need to be warned about recent escapees from their creations that menace wild wetlands, says a Florida botanist. Rotala rotundifolia turned up uninvited last year in a northern Alabama pond, and...

Back-of-the Envelope Physics.(Book Review)
August 16, 2003... CLIFFORD SWARTZ This compilation of some 100 calculations celebrates the quantitative approach physicists use to solve problems. Swartz, the editor of The Physics Teacher, provides simple, approximate solutions to physics problems that...

Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science.(Book Review)
August 16, 2003... PETER ATKINS By isolating and elaborating on 10 great ideas, Atkins summarizes scientific thought since Galileo's time. The core ideas profiled address topics in evolution and the emergence of complexity, DNA and genetics, energy, entropy,...

Power Play: The Fight to Control the World's Electricity.(Book Review)
August 16, 2003... SHARON BEDER Corporations such as Enron fought long and hard to deregulate the world's electricity supply. They argued that private industry could provide cheaper and better power to more people. The fall of Enron, widespread blackouts in...

Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution.(Book Review)
August 16, 2003... LEONARD SHLAIN Working from the premise that Homo sapiens emerged 150,000 years ago in Africa from Mitochondrial Eve, Shlain argues that humans succeeded because of the dramatic change in hormonal cycle that Eve and her female successors...

Where Stuff Comes From: How Toasters, Toilets, Cars, Computers, and Many Other Things Come to Be As They Are.(Book Review)
August 16, 2003... HARVEY MOLOTCH Most of us put bread into a toaster without really considering how this machine works or how it was designed. Molotch considers those issues for toasters and scores of other inventions, as well as how people desire, produce,...

To be human.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 16, 2003... I have always been fascinated by the subject of "African Legacy: Fossils plug gap in human origins" (SN: 6/14/03, p. 371). I have a simple question: Is there a definitive set of standards (physical or behavioral or both) that defines modern...

Not so great.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 16, 2003... Your article "Not So Green? Using hydrogen as fuel may hurt environment" (SN: 6/14/03, p. 373) worries that hydrogen-fuel leakage may add to stratospheric ozone problems. Doesn't that presuppose that the hydrogen for fuel is generated from a...

Take a closer look.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 16, 2003... "Lithium Sees the Light: Images of tiny ion may help battery designers" (SN: 6/21/03, p. 388) exaggerates the capability of transmission electron microscopy by stating that "individual lithium ions" are seen. The research paper described says...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
August 16, 2003... In "Why do two-sex geckos triumph?" (SN: 8/2/03, p. 78), the genus name for the unisexual geckos should have been spelled Lepidodactylus (not Lepidodactylas).

Popular painkillers linked to miscarriage.(Prenatal Cares)
August 23, 2003... Women trying to get pregnant or who are in the early stages of pregnancy should avoid taking certain painkillers, a new study suggests. Researchers in California report that women who took aspirin, ibuprofen, or related pain-fighting...

Spacecraft measures record amount of stellar debris.(It's Raining Stardust)
August 23, 2003... Intruder alert! Stardust is sneaking into our solar system at three times the rate that it was just 6 years ago. Moreover, the influx of dust could triple again by the end of 2010. These findings are based on the latest measurements by the...

Cantilevers detect trace amounts of explosives.(Bomb Sniffer)
August 23, 2003... Plastic explosives are difficult to detect because a bomb maker can mold them into concealable or inconspicuous objects. Consider shoe bombs. Existing technologies for sensing explosives are bulky and expensive. Now, however, researchers have...

Egg-deploying bird species divide for a song.(Musical Pairs)
August 23, 2003... Musical taste, rather than geography, may have split Africa's indigobirds into multiple species, and a new analysis gives a genetic underpinning for that idea. This scenario puts indigobirds among the few vertebrates for which scientists...

Lung ills linked to suicidal thoughts.(Uneasy Breathing)
August 23, 2003... Lung disorders such as asthma don't just interfere with breathing. Sufferers of these ailments report thoughts of suicide and self-harm far more often than do people treated for other physical illnesses, a new study finds. Previous studies...

Ozone-killing bromine is on the decline.(Clearing the Air)
August 23, 2003... Chemical analyses of Earth's lower atmosphere show that the overall concentration of bromine, a component of many potent ozone-destroying chemicals, has dropped about 5 percent since reaching a peak in 1998. Besides being a promising sign for...

Lice hint at a recent origin of clothing.(The Naked Truth?)
August 23, 2003... It began when Mark Stoneking's son brought home a note saying a kid at school had lice. While another parent might react with disgust, the anthropologist was intrigued by these microscopic creatures. Stoneking turned his new fascination...

On shifting ground: how much is enough when mitigating earthquake damage?
August 23, 2003... Earthquakes now endanger more people than ever. The world population has more than doubled in the past 50 years and, by 2007, half of the planet's 6.6 billion people will be living in urban centers. Because more than 380 major cities lie on or...

Predicting prostate cancer's moves: new tests could refine therapy decisions.
August 23, 2003... When a man's physician diagnoses prostate cancer, difficult decisions about the patient's treatment course lie ahead. Surgery or radiation therapy could either extend life or needlessly impair the man's quality of life. Two decades ago, a...

Stellar speed limit.(Astronomy)
August 23, 2003... Ripples in the fabric of space-time may put the brakes on the fastest-spinning stars in the universe and prevent them from flying apart. These stars, known as pulsars, pack as much mass as the sun into a sphere only about 16 kilometers across....

Drug reduces risks for dialysis patients.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
August 23, 2003... Kidney failure has a knack for depleting calcium in the blood. That can weaken a person's bones and cause other problems. To correct for a lack of calcium, roughly half of all kidney dialysis patients get vitamin D injections. Unfortunately,...