Science News articles from August 2004

Science News archives from August 2004

Antibody thwarts disease in mice.(Stopping Alzheimer's)
August 7, 2004... Amyloid beta, the waxy protein that litters the brains of Alzheimer's patients, is like a criminal with maw arrests but no convictions. Studies have implicated amyloid plaques in the disease, but nobody has proved that they cause it. Now,...

Telescopes find signs of gentler gamma-ray bursts.(Explosive News)
August 7, 2004... Some of the most powerful explosions in the universe could be 10 times as abundant as astronomers had assumed. That suggestion comes from two new studies indicating that many gamma-ray bursts--intense flashes of gamma-ray photons--go undetected...

Mouse study shows new therapy may reverse muscular dystrophy.(Gene Delivery)
August 7, 2004... For people with the most common type of muscular dystrophy, one faulty gene wreaks devastating consequences. Researchers have now found a way to deliver a working copy of the gene to the entire muscular system in mice that suffer from the...

New strategy for steering drops with finesse.(Lighting the Way for Water)
August 7, 2004... Several years ago, a team of researchers in Japan used a beam of light to move drops of oil around on a surface. They could not do the same thing with water drops, however. Now, with inspiration from lotus leaves, a second team has succeeded in...

Insects may spread foodborne microbe to chickens.(Swallowed a Fly)
August 7, 2004... Flies sucked through ventilation shafts into industrial chicken coops may be the primary carriers of a major cause of food poisoning in people, a Danish study suggests. Campylobacter bacteria, such as the common Campylobacter jejuni,...

Anybody know this fish?(Swallowed a Fly)(anglerfishs)(Brief Article)
August 7, 2004... This week, an international team of 60 scientists concluded a marine-biodiversity survey of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and brought home a variety of novelties. This anglerfish was among the finds of the project, which is part of the worldwide...

Bird brain?Cranial scan of fossil hints at flight capability.(Bird Brain?)(Archaeopteryx)
August 7, 2004... A detailed x-ray scan of the fossilized brain-case of an Archaeopteryx shows that several features of the ancient feathered creature's brain and inner ear were highly developed and similar to those of modern birds. Many scientists consider...

Corals without boarders: it's cold, dark, and there's no help from live-in algae.
August 7, 2004... Tony Koslow is one of the authors of a new United Nations, report on cold-water corals, yet he says he wasn't giving them much thought as recently as a decade ago. These aren't the coral reefs in vacation paradises of warm, sunny beaches, but...

Starting from square one: the intricate behaviors of quarks may finally yield to calculation.
August 7, 2004... Quarks are the smaller-than-a-proton particles without which there would be no stars, dogs, or breakfast burritos. In 1986, after a dozen frustrating years of trying to find ways of using computers to calculate properties of quark-containing...

A little bit of Mars on Earth.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
August 7, 2004... Sending rovers on a 500-million-kilometer journey to explore the Martian landscape isn't the only way to uncover the history of the Red Planet. Chunks of rock that have been chipped from Mars by ancient impacts and then pulled to Earth by our...

Computers read mammograms to detect breast cancer.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
August 7, 2004... By using computers programmed to recognize suspicious mammograms, doctor can find breast cancers that would otherwise escape diagnosis, say radiologists who are among the minority in their profession currently using the technique. Stamatia...

Young star's glow suggests planet find.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
August 7, 2004... The X-ray outburst of a young, sunlike star may provide new insights about planet formation. The X-ray study dates to last January, when amateur astronomer Jay McNeill of Paducah, Ky., used a small telescope to discover a cloud of dust and gas...

Title IX: women are catching up, but ...(Science & Society)(evaluation of Education Amendments of 1972 )(Brief Article)
August 7, 2004... The 1972 law known as Title IX bans sex discrimination at educational institutions receiving federal funds. The act is renowned for increasing girls' participation in sports, but less recognized has been Title IX'S role in fostering women's...

Charging gold with a single electron.(Technology)(Brief Article)
August 7, 2004... By transferring a single electron to a gold atom, scientists have converted a neutral atom into a negatively charged ion. The switching of the electronic state of an individual atom is not only a demonstration of the exquisite control over...

Quantum dots light up cancer cells in mice.(Nanotechnology)(Brief Article)
August 7, 2004... By tagging living cells with nanometer-size semiconductor crystals known as quantum dots, researchers recently opened a new way of viewing the cell's machinery (SN: 2/15/03, p. 107). With the goal of developing more-sensitive screens for...

Where Ph.D.s pay off.(Science & Society)(wages of doctoral degree holders)(Brief Article)
August 7, 2004... In 2001, almost 575,000 men and women who had earned doctoral degrees in the United States were employed full-or part-time in science and engineering--up more than 18 percent from 1995, according to a new National Science Foundation (NSF)...

Twin satellites track water's rise and fall.(Earth Science)(Brief Article)
August 7, 2004... A pair of satellites launched in 2002 has detected small, localized changes in Earth's gravitational field caused by seasonal variations in rainfall and soil moisture. Earth's gravity can vary from place to place as large masses of air and...

Copies in Seconds: How a Lone Inventor and an Unknown Company Created the Biggest Communication Breakthrough Since Gutenberg--Chester Carlson and the Birth of the Xerox Machine.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 7, 2004... Today, we take for granted the ability to copy a newspaper clipping or a legal paper. However, before xerography, it was difficult to share such documents. Intrigued by this generally unheralded development. Owen focuses on Chester Carlson, who...

Do You Really Need Back Surgery?: a Surgeon's Guide to Neck and Back Pain and How to Choose Your Treatment.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 7, 2004... Every year, more than half a million people undergo surgery to relieve chronic back pain, and in many cases, they still hurt afterwards. Filler, a neurosurgeon at Cedars Sinai Hospital in LOS Angeles, offers readers advice on a wide range of...

The Language Report: the Ultimate Record of What We're Saying and How We're Saying It.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 7, 2004... For people who want to keep up with the latest words and phrases but don't long to troll the new edition of the oxford English Dictionary, Dent provides a short list of new additions to the lexicon and elaborates on how the English language...

Night Science for Kids: Exploring the World after Dark.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 7, 2004... Great for camping and summer nights when the kids are up late, this activity guide explores what goes on when most people sleep. Children discover how to interpret the flashing signals of fireflies and find out how those insects generate their...

The Sky Is Not The Limit." Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 7, 2004... As director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, Tyson holds the reins of an institution that's dear to people who love science. In this memoir, Tyson ruminates on what led him to pursue astrophysics, the role of mentors who helped him...

Pot shots.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 7, 2004... Regarding "Pot on the Spot: Marijuanas risks become blurrier" (SN: 5/22/04, p. 323), it seems to me that the stronger the social pressure against using marijuana in a culture, the more likely it will be that those who use it will be troubled,...

Bowwow wow.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 7, 2004... "Breeds Apart: Purebred dogs defined by DNA differences" (SN: 5/22/04, p. 324) failed to include in the list of oldest dogs the Shiba Inu. This is the most popular dog in Japan today, and many of its qualities make it a much better pet than the...

Common hippo sense.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 7, 2004... The Japanese researchers who dubbed a pachyderm secretion to be "hipposudoric acid" seem to know more about biochemistry than about etymology ("Red Sweat: Hippo skin oozes antibiotic sunscreen," SN: 5/29/04, p. 341). The word hippopotamus is a...

Painful lesson.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 7, 2004... "Sexing Brains Down and Up: Early aspirin dose hits male rats below the belt" (SN: 5/29/04, p. 340) seems to use "aspirin" and "acetaminophen" interchangeably. Aspirin is acetyl salicylic acid, not acetaminophen (better known as Tylenol). ...

Growth spurt: teenage tyrannosaurs packed on the pounds.
August 14, 2004... Detailed analyses of fossils of Tyrannosaurus rex and some of its more ancient kin suggest that the creatures experienced an extended surge in growth during adolescence, putting on as much as half their adult weight in a mere 4 years. T....

Glowing trio under the sea: nitrogen fixer joins. algae inside coral.
August 14, 2004... A Caribbean coral that fluoresces orange appears to be the first ever found to contain a symbiotic microbe that converts elemental nitrogen into a biologically usable form, as bacteria in the roots of bean plants do. The glow of...

Protecting baby: calcium in pregnancy reduces lead exposure.
August 14, 2004... The danger of lead poisoning is well known, but how best to protect infants from its effects hasn't been established. Scientists have now shown that by taking calcium supplements during pregnancy, a mother can significantly reduce the lead...

Joint effort: bacteria in yogurt combat arthritis in rats.
August 14, 2004... Consuming either dairy foods or certain types of bacteria may fight arthritis, research in laboratory rats suggests. Yogurt that contains live bacteria appears to be particularly effective against the inflammatory joint disorder. Various...

One of Hubble's tools fails: observatory loses a sharp ultraviolet eye.(Hubble Space Telescope, Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph)
August 14, 2004... Last week, an instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope stopped working, shutting astronomers' only sharp ultraviolet eye on the universe. On Aug. 3, a malfunction--possibly a short circuit--developed in a 5-volt power supply that drives...

Curbing allergy to insect venom: therapy stops reactions to stings years later.
August 14, 2004... Immunizing adults against insect-sting allergies has proved highly effective since it was first tested in the 1970s. But while many children receive shots for allergies such as hay fever, they're much less likely than adults to receive allergy...

Savvy Sieve: carbon nanotubes filter petroleum, polluted water.
August 14, 2004... Bridging the gap between the nanoworld and the macroworld, researchers have created a membrane out of carbon nanotubes and demonstrated its potential for filtering petroleum and treating contaminated drinking water. Scientists have long...

Don't let the bugs bite: can genetic engineering defeat diseases spread by insects?
August 14, 2004... Celia Cordon-Rosales wants to build a ghost town. A dozen small thatch and adobe huts would stand in several clusters. A few pigs would occupy nearby pens, insects would buzz to and fro, and bacteria would live out unremarkable lives. But the...

To err is human: influential research on our social shortcomings attracts a scathing critique.
August 14, 2004... It's a story of fear, loathing, and crazed college boys trapped in perhaps the most notorious social psychology study of all time. In the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo randomly assigned male college students...

Worm to elephant: new genome targets.(Biology)(Brief Article)
August 14, 2004... The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) has released a list of 18 wildly different creatures as targets for genome sequencing. The scientists making the selection clambered all over the tree of life, looking for lineages near...

Meteorites quickly reach Earth.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
August 14, 2004... Fragments from collisions between large bodies in the asteroid belt, which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, can reach Earth in as little as 100,000 years, chemical analyses of such material suggest. Excavations at a quarry in...

HIV drugs may stop cervical disease.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
August 14, 2004... A drug combination commonly given to people with HIV, the AIDS virus, can knock out precancerous growths on a woman's cervix, a new study indicates. Previous research had suggested that HIV-positive women are particularly susceptible to...

The sound of rings.(Astronomy)(cosmic dust hits Cassini to produce audible sounds)(Brief Article)
August 14, 2004... Arriving at Saturn on June 30, the Cassini spacecraft sped through a 24,730-kilometer gap in the giant planet's rings. Three hours later, it crossed back in the other direction (SN: 7/10/04, p. 22). These pinpoint crossings helped shape the...

Mechanism suggested for Guam illness.(Biology)
August 14, 2004... A research team has invoked protein chemistry to propose a solution to one of the most puzzling parts of Guam's longstanding neuroscience mystery. During the 20th century, the prevalence of the neurologic disease called amyotrophic lateral...

Severe sweating treated with Botox.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
August 14, 2004... A new treatment has been approved for excessive sweating, which a team of researchers reports is surprisingly common. Until recently, few data had existed on the prevalence of the condition, known as hyperhidrosis. So, Jonathan Kowalski of...

Old-fashioned circumcision can spread herpes.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
August 14, 2004... Boys whose ritual circumcisions involve an ancient, and now rare, practice may acquire herpes during the operation. Some cultures in which the penis foreskin is routinely removed by surgery have long recognized that the practice partially...

The Birdwatcher's Companion to North American Birdlife.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... THE BIRDWATCHER'S COMPANION TO NORTH AMERICAN BIRDLIFE CHRISTOPHER W. LEAHY, ILLUSTRATIONS BY GORDON MORRISON Thoroughly updated and revised from its initial edition some 20 years ago, this encyclopedia provides an overview of North...

Einstein A to Z.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... EINSTEIN A TO Z KAREN C. FOX AND ARIES KECK In a novel twist to a well-worn but never boring subject, this set of essays documents various aspects of Albert Einstein's life in vignettes arranged alphabetically by subject, ranging from...

The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, prediction, and the Fault Line between Reason and Faith.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... THE MYTH OF SOLID GROUND: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line between Reason and Faith DAVID. L. ULIN AS an East Coast transplant to California, Ulin is fascinated with the precarious nature of fault line living, especially since...

Newton: the Making of Genius.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... NEWTON: The Making of Genius PATRICIA FARA Even the youngest schoolchild is familiar with the story of Isaac Newton, the world's first great scientist, and the falling apple. But how did this reputation develop at a time when the word...

Why Stock Markets Crash: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 14, 2004... WHY STOCK MARKETS CRASH: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems DIDIER SORNETTE In this book, a scientist, Sornette, treads on economists' territory. She applies cutting-edge thinking in the field of complexity and the theory of...

It's a groove thing.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 14, 2004... I don't want to downplay genuine discovery, but your story about optically reading old records left me a little underwhelmed ("Groovy Pictures: Extracting sound from images of old audio recordings," SN: 5/29/04, p. 339). The optical playing of...

Words of war.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 14, 2004... I felt that "Travels with the War Goddess" (SN: 5/29/04, p. 344) treated the customs and people of Samoa with disrespect and patronized their cultural ways. ROBERT OLIVER, TUCSON, ARIZ. I must commend you on the article. Its...

Unorthodox strategy: new cancer vaccine may thwart melanoma.(This Week)
August 21, 2004... Efforts to enlist the immune system in the fight against cancer have generally yielded disappointing results. Scientists have yet to create a so-called cancer vaccine that reliably primes the immune system to recognize malignant cells and...

Saturn watch: Cassini finds two new moons and lightning.(This Week)
August 21, 2004... The Cassini spacecraft has just begun its 4-year tour around Saturn, but the mission is already proving a tour de force. An analysis of images taken by Cassini in early June, several weeks before the craft settled into orbit about Saturn,...

Rattle and hum: molecular machinery makes yeast cells purr.(This Week)
August 21, 2004... It's not just heart cells that beat; yeast cells also move to their own rhythm. While investigating the physical properties of yeast cells, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) discovered that the cell walls were...

Lifting the mood: depressed teens benefit from combined therapy.(This Week)
August 21, 2004... Each year, approximately 1 in 20 teenagers experiences the anguish of major depression. Schoolwork and social life suffer as these youngsters grapple with feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, often topped by suicidal thoughts or...

Early shift: North Sea plankton and fish move out of sync.(This Week)
August 21, 2004... As ocean temperatures in the North Sea have warmed in recent decades, the life cycles of some species low in the food chain have accelerated significantly, sometimes setting off ecological havoc, new analyses suggest. Many marine...

Finding a missing link: scientists show a new connection between inflammation and cancer.(This Week)(IKK-beta)
August 21, 2004... For more than 100 years, researchers have sought links between inflammation and cancer. Now, a team of scientists studying gastrointestinal cancer in mice presents powerful evidence of a molecular connection between those conditions. In...

Warm reflections: window tint kicks in when it's hot.(This Week)
August 21, 2004... Some window coatings reflect heat. Unfortunately, they also keep out the sun's warmth when outside temperatures are chilly. Now, chemists in England have created a window coating that automatically transforms into a heat mirror only when warmed...

Cosmic melody: tuning in to the early universe.
August 21, 2004... Mark Whittle's new CD isn't likely to win a Grammy, but it's got a primal beat. Beginning with a scream and ending in a deafening hiss, the sound track reflects what he and many other astronomers suspect the universe sounded like immediately...

Tricky business: the crystal form of a drug can be the secret to its success.
August 21, 2004... In one of Kurt Vonnegut's science fiction novels, a scientist creates a form of ice that doesn't melt until it reaches 114.4[degrees]F. Called Ice-9, this imaginary crystal takes over the world, as all of Earth's waters, and life itself, freeze...

3-D solar eruptions.(Astronomy)(research of coronal mass ejections)(Brief Article)
August 21, 2004... When they're blasted toward Earth, solar eruptions known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) can disrupt radio communications, satellite links, and power systems. To better gauge the angle at which CMEs emerge from the sun and predict their...

Bees increase coffee profits.(Agriculture)(Brief Article)
August 21, 2004... Because they pollinate crops near their hives, wild and feral bees are assets to farmers. Ecologists recognize such pollination as one benefit of conserving wooded habitat adjacent to farmland (SN: 7/6/02, p. 13). Now, scientists working...

Sea urchin shell lights the way for optical material.(Materials Science)(Brief Article)
August 21, 2004... Someday, optical communications and high-speed computing might owe their success to a little ocean creature: the sea urchin. Materials scientists have fabricated a photonic crystal using a piece of the organism's shell as a template. For...

Neutrons may spotlight cancers.(Technology)(Brief Article)
August 21, 2004... Doctors often image patients' tissues using X rays, magnetic resonance imaging, or various other approaches. A new experiment suggests that scans by beams of fast-moving neutrons may someday join the ranks of diagnostic-imaging tools. ...

Demanding careers may thwart Alzheimer's.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
August 21, 2004... People who spend many years in mentally taxing jobs are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than are people who do more-routine work, a report in the Aug. 10 Neurology suggests. Scientists at Case Western Reserve University School of...

Bacterial glue: the stuff that binds?(Materials Science)(Ruminococcus albus, Clostridium thermocellum)(Brief Article)
August 21, 2004... A sticky slime secreted by bacteria could soon find its way into a host of wood products, such as plywood and particleboard. Wisconsin scientists discovered the natural adhesive while investigating the fermentation of alfalfa to make ethanol...

Finding a lunar meteorite's home.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
August 21, 2004... Scientists have for the first time pinpointed the source of a meteorite that came from the moon. By measuring the rock's age, the researchers have precisely dated the rock's lunar home, the Imbrium impact basin, which is the youngest of the...

Antimatter loses again.(Physics)(Brief Article)
August 21, 2004... Physicists have added another piece to the puzzle of why so little antimatter exists in today's universe. In theory, the explosive birth of the universe produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Those incompatible substances didn't...

Humankind: a Brief History.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 21, 2004... FELIPE FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO We used to think we understood what separates humans from the animals, we walk upright. We have big brains. We're capable of speech and reason, we are conscious beings. Now, advances in genetics, paleoanthropology,...

Kepler's Witch: an Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 21, 2004... JAMES A. CONNOR Johannes Kepler is celebrated at the "father of celestial Mechanics." His three laws of planetary motion set the stage for Isaac Newton's work on gravity and provided proof of the Copernican universe. This 17th-century...

Memory Fitness: a Guide for Successful Aging.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 21, 2004... GILLES O. EINSTEIN AND MARK A. MCDANIEL Nutritional supplements and cognitive techniques touted by ads, books, and other media as ways to boost memory are based on unsubstantiated claims, Einstein and McDaniel contend. In an attempt to set...

No Turning Back: the Life and Death of Animal Species.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 21, 2004... RICHARD ELLIS Extinction is hardly novel. It has been a critical element of evolution since the beginning of time. However, the current rate of species extinction is unprecedented. This causes Ellis, a naturalist and illustrator, to take...

Complex issue.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 21, 2004... When cyanobacteria and plants transfer electrons photosynthetically, light is absorbed not by their photosynthetic proteins but by chlorophylls ("Protein Power: Solar cell produces electricity from spinach and bacterial proteins," SN: 6/5/04,...

Let there be light.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 21, 2004... The article on nanotubes as light sources was frustratingly sketchy ("Tiny Tubes Brighten Bulbs: Nanotubes beat tungsten in lightbulb test--maybe," SN: 6/5/04, p. 356). Any photometric laboratory with a wattmeter could compare the nanotube unit...

Lively topic.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 21, 2004... Since the hypoxia described in "Dead Waters" (SN: 6/5/04, p. 360) isn't caused directly by the fertilizer, but by the subsequent algae blooms, then perhaps an effective solution is to combat the algae. It might even be profitable to harvest the...

Face to face: crystal-growth method bodes electric payoff.(This Week)
August 28, 2004... Like a runner with an Olympian's strength but flawed technique, the rugged semiconductor silicon carbide has crystal defects that have kept it from being crowned as a champ among electrical materials. Even so, the compound dominates a niche of...

Rounding up resistance: weed sacrifices seeds to put up with a herbicide.(This Week)
August 28, 2004... Use of a common agricultural herbicide is driving evolution of at least one weed species, a new study finds. In response to applications containing glyphosate, the tall morning glory (Ipomoea purpurea) grows increasingly impervious to that...

Super portrait: x-ray telescope eyes supernova remnant.(This Week)(Chandra X-ray Observatory )
August 28, 2004... When light from a massive star that exploded in the constellation Cassiopeia reached Earth some 340 years ago, few if any sky watchers recorded the event. But over the past several decades, the glowing remains of that explosion--a vast bubble...

Ringing out despair: phone therapy gets call as depression buster.(This Week)
August 28, 2004... It may be time for mental-health workers to pick up a new depression-fighting tool--the telephone. People taking antidepressant drags for a bout of depression do particularly well, at least over a 6-month period, if they also take part in a...

North and south: equal melting from each hemisphere raised ice age sea levels.(This Week)
August 28, 2004... The gargantuan volumes of meltwater that boosted sea levels during the most recent round of ice ages derived equally from ice sheets in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, according to new simulations of ocean currents. Between 65,000...

There's a catch: recreation takes toll on marine fish.(This Week)
August 28, 2004... Sport-fishing isn't just a tiny, harmless nibble on saltwater-fish populations, according to a new analysis of federal data. For species flagged for special concern in U.S. waters, sportfishing accounts for 23 percent of the harvest, says...

Keeping cells under control: enzyme suppression inhibits cancer spread.(This Week)(heparanase)
August 28, 2004... Shutting down an enzyme can slow the spread of cancer in mice, scientists in Israel report. The finding suggests that further study of this enzyme, called heparanase, might lead to a treatment for cancer patients. Normally, heparanase...

A better distorted view: the physics of diffusion offers a new way of generating maps.(Cover Story)
August 28, 2004... A map can show much more than rivers, roads, and political boundaries. It can express an attitude. Saul Steinberg's famous New Yorker cover illustration, called "View from 9th Avenue," shows a foreshortened map of New York City and its...

Smokey the gardener: fire begets flowers, but heat often has nothing to do with it.
August 28, 2004... By the end of the 1980s, the human race could grow golf course greens in the middle of a desert, breed bell peppers to look like chocolate, and raise pumpkins that weigh hundreds of pounds. But all that amassed knowledge wasn't telling graduate...

A new deep-sea submersible.(Oceanography)(Brief Article)
August 28, 2004... Scientists from the Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution and the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Va., have announced a 4-year, $21.6-million design-and-construction effort to replace the aging research submersible Alvin. ...

Bright nights kindle cancers in mice.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
August 28, 2004... Data from mice subjected to constant illumination suggest that artificial light may increase risks of lung and liver cancers and leukemia. Exposure to light at night reduces production of melatonin, a hormone that calibrates the body's...