Science News articles from August 2005

Science News archives from August 2005

Double dog: researchers produce first cloned canine.(This Week)
August 6, 2005... The dogged pursuit of a South Korean research team has produced the world's first surviving cloned canine. The new puppy--dubbed Snuppy by the scientists after its birth at Seoul National University on April 24--is the genetic double of a...

Bigger than Pluto: tenth planet or icy leftover?(This Week)
August 6, 2005... Step aside, Pluto, there's a new kid in town. Astronomers last week announced that they have detected a body larger and more distant than Pluto. It's the biggest body found in the solar system since Neptune and its moon Triton were discovered...

From famine, schizophrenia: starvation gives birth to personality disorder.(This Week)
August 6, 2005... Women who go severely hungry during early pregnancy face twice the normal risk of having a child who develops schizophrenia in adulthood, shows a study of the prevalence of the personality disorder among people who were born in China before,...

Multifaceted mineral: intense heat, pressure bear new form of silica.(This Week)
August 6, 2005... By squeezing a sample of quartz to pressures higher than those deep within Earth while zapping the material with a laser, scientists have created an exotic mineral previously unknown on Earth. They speculate that it may occur naturally on some...

Speed reader: gene sequencing gets a boost.(innovation in gene sequencing approach)
August 6, 2005... In what some scientists are describing as the most sweeping innovation in gene sequencing in the past 25 years, researchers have developed a tool that can read out DNA's genetic letters up to 100 times as fast as the standard technique does....

Virus attack on cancer: heat makes neglected technology work better.(This Week)
August 6, 2005... Pitting one bad actor against another, scientists are enlisting a virus to take on cancer. Tests in animals and some limited trials in patients have suggested that the technology could be effective. But before the trials progressed to their...

Space woes; NASA programs reel from shuttle problems.(National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
August 6, 2005... Two and a half years after the catastrophic breakup of the shuttle Columbia, NASA's shuttle program roared back into space with the July 26 launch of Discovery. But faulty sensors, falling foam, and dangling insulation have raised concern for...

Easy striders: new humanoids with efficient gaits change the robotics landscape.(Cover Story)
August 6, 2005... Before it moves, the robot doesn't look like much. A rickety bundle of metal plates and rods standing on two thin legs, it resembles a science fair project more than it does a major advance in technology. Only two small motors, some simple...

The human wave: people may have evolved fluidly, with lots of interbreeding.
August 6, 2005... Release a drop of red food coloring into a glass filled with water. Watch the drop slowly spread until it imbues the water with a rosy tint. Then, add a drop of blue coloring and observe the boundaries of purple expand. According to Vinayak...

Great river cycles carbon quickly.(carbon cycle of Amazon river basin)(Brief Article)
August 6, 2005... The Amazon and its tributaries release about 500 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. Some of that gas comes from the oxidation of organic material in soil or from the decomposition of woody debris, which may have...

Human immune signal sets off bacterial attack.(opportunistic infections research )(Brief Article)
August 6, 2005... A chemical secreted by immune cells when people are sick or stressed causes a common gut bacterium to go on the offensive against its host, according to a new study. Pseudomonas aeruginosa lives harmlessly in the intestines of about 3...

Lyme microbe forms convenient bond with tick protein.(Lyme disease infection cycle)(Brief Article)
August 6, 2005... Tests in mice indicate that the bacterium that causes Lyme disease can commandeer a gene in its interim host--the deer tick--enabling the bacterium to escape immune detection once inside a mammal. Researchers at Yale University report in...

Bacteria feed on stinky breath.(bad breath treatment using sulphur reducing bacteria)(Brief Article)
August 6, 2005... Bad breath is something that most people fight hard to avoid. Now, scientists have isolated from people's mouths bacteria that aid in that battle. The microbes consume the chemicals that cause mouth odor. Last year, Ann P. Wood of King's...

King George III should have sued.(Porphyria and arsenic poisoning)(Brief Article)
August 6, 2005... The madness of King George III of England might have been the fault of his doctors as much as of substandard royal genes. An analysis of preserved locks of the king's hair shows that his body harbored high amounts of arsenic, which could have...

Hurricanes get boost from ocean spray.(mathematical model for analysing the ocean spray)(Brief Article)
August 6, 2005... A new mathematical model that describes airflow across the ocean's surface suggests that droplets whipped from the tops of waves increase the speeds of winds well above what they'd be if the spray wasn't there. Winds are caused by...

Life thrived below solid ice shelf.(sea bed organic sediments research study)(Brief Article)
August 6, 2005... An area of Antarctic seafloor that until recently was covered by thick, floating ice is host to a several-millennia-old ecosystem apparently based on chemical nourishment, not sunshine, according to a recent underwater survey of the area. ...

The Wizard of Sun City: The Strange True Story of Charles Hatfield, the Rainmaker Who Drowned a City's Dreams.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Garry Jenkins)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 6, 2005... THE WIZARD OF SUN CITY The Stragne True Story of Charles Hatfield, the Rainmaker Who Drowned a City's Dreams GARRY JENKINS As the U.S. border pushed westward in the early 1900s, farmers in the arid lands being opened sought relief from...

Practical Science for Gardeners.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Mary M Pratt)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 6, 2005... PRACTICAL SCIENCE FOR GARDENERS MARY M PRATT The author proposes that a better understanding of the science of plants will make people better gardeners, and she has structured her book accordingly. She starts by explaining how plants...

The Quiet Mountains: A Ten-Year Search for the Last Wild Trout of Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 6, 2005... THE QUIET MOUNTAINS: A Ten-Year Search for the Last Wild Trout of Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental REX JOHNSON JR. Books on fly fishing come in several forms, none of which resembles The Quiet Mountains. This isn't a travel book, and...

Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare.(book by Daniel Charles)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 6, 2005... MASTER MIND: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare DANIEL CHARLES This is the first biography of a little-known German scientist whose impact on the first half of the 20th century...

Tiger Bone & Rhino Horn: The Destruction of Wildlife for Traditional Chinese Medicine.(book by Richard Ellis)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 6, 2005... TIGER BONE & RHINO HORN: The Destruction of Wildlife for Traditional Chinese Medicine RICHARD ELLIS Traditional Chinese medicine makes judicious use of natural substances--primarily herbs--to treat human ailments. However, its use of...

Empty threat?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
August 6, 2005... "Empty Nets: Fisheries may be crippling themselves by targeting the big ones" (SN: 6/4/05, p. 360) reads as if there is something to be alarmed about. By selectively catching large fish, we have reduced "the mean size [of food fish to]...

What wavelengths?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
August 6, 2005... The article "Icy Heat: Satellites look at heat flow through Antarctica's crust" (SN: 6/11/05, p. 373) refers to the Earth's magnetic field only at very long wavelengths. In over 70 years' exposure to science, I have never heard of our magnetic...

Fungus fallacy.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
August 6, 2005... "Farmers without Fungus: How to store peanuts to reduce toxins" (SN: 6/11/05, p. 374) made the minimization of aflatoxins in peanuts sound beneficial until the recommendation to treat the ground beneath the peanut pallets with insecticides....

Corrections.(Correction Notice)
August 6, 2005... In "Pieces of Numbers" (SN: 6/18/05, p. 392), the statement that "partition congruences exist for every prime number" should have read, "... eye, prime number, starting with 5." No one has shown that congruences exist for 2 or 3. "Volcanic...

Sun struck: data suggest skin cancer epidemic looms.(This Week)
August 13, 2005... Young adults are experiencing a sharp increase in the incidence of non-melanoma skin cancers, a new study finds. These readily treatable tumors had been considered mainly a problem for people over age 60. The youthful trend "is more than...

Methane maker: method gets to root of gas from rice paddies.(methane producing soil bacteria in rice paddies)
August 13, 2005... In experiments using a rare isotope of carbon, scientists have singled out microorganisms that appear to be largely responsible for natural emissions of the greenhouse gas methane from rice paddies. The finding may lead to methods to trim this...

Out of the jungle: new lemurs found in Madagascar's forests.(This Week)
August 13, 2005... The family of the world's smallest primate just got a little bigger. U.S. and Malagasy primatologists have discovered a new species of mouse lemur, an arboreal, fist-size animal on the African island of Madagascar, the home of all lemurs. ...

Electronic leap: plastic component may lead to ubiquitous radio tags.
August 13, 2005... Already common in such gadgets as highway passes for paying toils on the move, miniature radio-equipped circuit cards may ultimately become as widespread as bar codes. First, however, the cost of such radio frequency identification (RFID) tags...

Three's company: asteroid 87 Sylvia and her two moons.(This Week)
August 13, 2005... Among the thousands of asteroids roaming the inner solar system, 87 Sylvia stands out. New observations reveal that two smaller asteroids orbit this 280-kilometer-wide rock. It's the first asteroid found to be accompanied by two moons. ...

New carrier: common tick implicated in spread of fever.(tick borne diseases research report)
August 13, 2005... A wide-ranging tick previously considered to be little more than a nuisance to people is responsible for at least 11 eases of Rocky Mountain spotted fever in eastern Arizona, researchers report. The lethal bacterial disease had been virtually...

A slumber not so sweet: loss of brain cells that regulate breathing may cause death during sleep.(This Week)
August 13, 2005... Researchers may have finally discovered how people die peacefully in their sleep. A new study in rats suggests that in elderly people, the brain gradually loses the cells that tell the body to breathe. When old people die during slumber,...

Just for frills? Decoding dinosaurs' cryptic anatomical features.
August 13, 2005... It's often easy to interpret a dinosaur's distinctive characteristics. Tyrannosaurus rex almost assuredly used its banana-size teeth to crush bones and to rip flesh from a carcass. Immense sauropods such as Paralititan and Brachiosaurus...

Cosmic computing: simulating the universe.(Cover Story)
August 13, 2005... To see the light, you sometimes have to journey through darkness. That aphorism, it seems, applies not only to journeys of the heart but also to excursions through the history of the universe. In the largest and most detailed computer...

Siccing fungi on malaria: mosquito-killing spores could curb the disease.(fungal spray to destroy malaria)
August 13, 2005... Week after week in late 2003, Kija Ng'habi spent his mornings capturing mosquitoes. In the Tanzanian village of Lupiro, he and a colleague would go from house to house, noting where they'd found each live insect. In spite of the bed nets...

Cosmic soot.(ASTRONOMY)(polyaromatic hydrocarbons the building blocks of life)(Brief Article)
August 13, 2005... Using an infrared telescope to peer far back in time, astronomers have made the first observations of complex organic molecules from an era when the universe was just 4 billion years old, less than a third of its current age. The...

After terror, moms' stress affects kids.(Post-traumatic stress disorder due to low cortisol in pregnant women)(Brief Article)
August 13, 2005... Infants born to women who developed posttraumatic stress disorder during pregnancy have, as their mothers do, unusually low concentrations of the hormone cortisol, researchers have found. That could partly explain why such children themselves...

Infants pick up toxic chemicals in intensive care.(diethylhexyl phthalate usage impact in premature babies)
August 13, 2005... Neonatal intensive care units routinely save the lives of extremely premature and critically ill newborns. Many of these successes are made possible by tubing and other equipment rendered flexible with a plasticizer known as diethylhexyl...

Feds pull approval of poultry antibiotic.(enrofloxacin reported drug resistance)
August 13, 2005... The Food and Drug Administration is about to prohibit poultry farmers from treating chickens and turkeys with the antibiotic enrofloxacin. Use of the antibiotic, whose trade name is Baytril, is leading to the emergence of microbes in the birds'...

Materials scientists go flat out.(isolation of single layers from materials has unique properties)(Brief Article)
August 13, 2005... By isolating single layers from materials with naturally layered structures, physicists in England and Russia have created what they say are the world's thinnest freestanding materials, some just one atom thick. The liberated layers are...

Nanotube carpet mimics gecko feet.(adhesives with van der Waals forces )(Brief Article)
August 13, 2005... The talented gecko can walk up a glass wall or hang from the ceiling by only one toe. The little lizard owes its gravity-defying powers to carpets of microscopic hairs, called setae, covering its feet. These hairs, when in close contact with a...

Study finds low battlefield hazard in depleted uranium.(radiation pollution health hazards)(Brief Article)
August 13, 2005... The U.S. and British militaries have been taking fire for their use of tank-piercing bullets made from depleted uranium, a weakly radioactive manufacturing by-product of nuclear fuel and warheads. Critics have charged that breathing airborne...

The Friar and the Cipher: Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusual Manuscript in the World.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Lawrence Goldstone and Nancy Goldstone )(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 13, 2005... THE FRIAR AND THE CIPHER: Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusual Manuscript in the World LAWRENCE AND NANCY GOLDSTONE Discovered in Italy in 1912, the mysterious Voynich manuscript appeared to be a 13th-century...

Paper or Plastic: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of science interest)(book by Daniel Imhoff and Roberto Carra)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 13, 2005... PAPER OR PLASTIC: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World DANIEL IMHOFF "Paper or plastic?" is a familiar refrain in the grocery store, but more than that, it represents a choice with profound implications for the world's...

Guide to Minerals, Rocks & Fossils.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of science interest)(book by A. C. Bishop, A. R. Woolley and W. R. Hamilton)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 13, 2005... GUIDE TO MINERALS, ROCKS & FOSSILS A.C. BISHOP, A.R. WOOLLEY, AND W.R. HAMILTON This field guide provides in-depth descriptions and color photos that will aid readers trying to identify minerals, rocks, and fossils. The introduction...

Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of science interest)(book by Arthur I. Miller)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 13, 2005... EMPIRE OF THE STARS: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes ARTHUR I. MILLER Launched in 1999, the Chandra X-ray Observatory was named for a man who 64 years earlier had developed a monumental calculation to...

Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of science interest)(book by Michael Chorost)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 13, 2005... REBUILT: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human MICHAEL CHOROST In an intensely personal narrative, Chorost describes his tumultuous journey from life as a deaf person to life with artificial hearing. Hard of hearing as the...

Bay listen.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
August 13, 2005... It was interesting to read of processing mundane noise to produce an ultrasound image of the geology of Los Angeles ("Seismic noise can yield maps of Earth's crust," SN: 6/11/05, p. 382). A big question in the state is the deep structure of San...

Lucy on the loose.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
August 13, 2005... "Faithful Ancestors: Researchers debate claims of monogamy for Lucy and her ancient kin" (SN: 6/11/05, p. 379) seems determined to impose (not very) modern cultural views on data that do not support them. Females would have benefited from a...

Like a rock?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
August 13, 2005... It seems to me that "Earthlike" is overused in the media ("Planet Hunt Strikes Rock: Hot kin of Earth orbits nearby star," SN: 6/18/05, p. 387). One always ends up using too many qualifiers. Gliese 876's orbit is very un-Earthlike, and its mass...

Sour taste.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
August 13, 2005... I am shocked and incensed by the study described in "No Sugar Babies: Study suggests treating gestational diabetes" (SN: 6/18/05, p. 389). It is unconscionable that nutritional counseling for gestational diabetes was kept from pregnant mothers....

Fine fabric: new, fast way to make sheets of nanotubes.
August 20, 2005... Scientists have come up with a way to efficiently produce thin, transparent sheets of carbon nanotubes that are several meters long and could have applications as diverse as automobile windows that double as antennas and electronic displays...

Outwitting TB: enhanced vaccine protects mice in lab tests.(tuberculosis)
August 20, 2005... The best vaccine against tuberculosis is also the only vaccine against tuberculosis, and it's not a great one at that. Called BCG, it protects many children, but it fails miserably in shielding adults. By genetically modifying the weakened...

Reservoirs of evolution: rainy periods linked to human origins in Africa.
August 20, 2005... A massive, earthquake-induced gash that cuts through eastern Africa contains evidence of three rainy phases during the Stone Age. They might have spurred the evolution of modern humanity's direct ancestors as well as of many other mammal...

Comb over chemicals: tool may rid heads of pesticideproof lice.
August 20, 2005... When used systematically for 2 weeks, special combs may be more effective than a single, one-day application of an insecticidal shampoo at ridding a child's scalp of head lice. In some countries, including the United States and England,...

X ray excels: technique brings a new image to medicine.
August 20, 2005... Imaging soft tissue in detail has required enormous particle accelerators that span several city blocks. A new method may soon bring this valuable diagnostic capability into hospital settings. There, researchers say, it will provide physicians...

Bitty beasts of burden: algae can carry cargo.
August 20, 2005... For thousands of years, people have been coaxing other creatures into doing chores. Now, a team of scientists has microsized the strategy. They've devised a way to make single-cell algae bear loads over distances of several centimeters--a...

Getting the gull: baiting trick spreads among killer whales.
August 20, 2005... A young male orca that started regurgitating fish and then ambushing seagulls attracted by the mess seems to have set off a wave of cultural transmission in his neighborhood. The innovative killer whale lives in MarineLand, an attraction in...

Myth of the bad-nose birds: study of avian sense of smell recovers from Audubon's blunder.(Cover Story)
August 20, 2005... Blame Audubon. Animal behaviorist Timothy Roper says that the renowned naturalist propagated die-hard misunderstandings of birds' sense of smell. In 1826, he published on the habits of the turkey vulture "with a View to Exploding the Opinion...

Potent medicine: can Viagra and other lifestyle drugs save lives?
August 20, 2005... The test for the boys and girls was simple: to cover as much ground as they could in 6 minutes. But these children, ages 5 to 18, had pulmonary hypertension--high blood pressure in their lungs from constricted blood vessels. Such kids "don't...

Big sky.(ASTRONOMY)(Brief Article)
August 20, 2005... The biggest survey of the heavens just got bigger. Covering nearly a quarter of the celestial hemisphere, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey over the past 5 years has mapped the location and brightness of several hundred million objects. In a new...

Roughing up counterfeiters .(TECHNOLOGY)(Brief Article)
August 20, 2005... A credit card or sheet of paper might look smooth, but under a microscope, these surfaces teem with ridges, pits, and other irregularities. Now, researchers in England have devised a way to translate those random artifacts of manufacturing into...

Tracking busy genes to get at cancer.(research)(Brief Article)
August 20, 2005... By identifying which genes are overactive in certain breast tumors, researchers have discovered a genetic signature that could help doctors predict if and when a woman's cancer might spread to her lungs. The findings could also clarify how...

Inhaling salt raises blood pressure.(research)(Brief Article)
August 20, 2005... For people who work in an environment where many salt particles hang in the air, it's possible to breathe one's way to high blood pressure, an occupational-health study shows. Kripa Haldiya and his colleagues at the Desert Medicine Research...

Frogs: Inside Their Remarkable World.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 20, 2005... FROGS: Inside Their Remarkable World ELLIN BELTZ This coffee table-style book is nevertheless a comprehensive guide to all 31 families of frogs. Spectacular full-color photographs show many species. The evolution of frogs, their anatomy,...

Divine Wind: The Hurricane in History, Art, and Science.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 20, 2005... DIVINE WIND: The Hurricane in History, Art, and Science KERRY A. EMANUEL It is said that a 17th-century hurricane led William Shakespeare to write "The Tempest." If so, the timing of that storm means that it was probably also responsible...

The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 20, 2005... THE INFINITE BOOK: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless JOHN D. BARROW Infinity is a difficult concept to grasp, stretching the imagination to the edge of possibility. In this book, Barrow looks closely at how the notion of...

The Seven Hills of Rome: A Geological Tour of the Eternal City.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 20, 2005... THE SEVEN HILLS OF ROME: A Geological Tour of the Eternal City GRANT HEIKEN, RENATO FUNICIELLO, AND DONATELLA DE RITA This fascinating and easy-to-read guidebook shows how the geography and geology of Rome allowed it to grow into the great...

1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
August 20, 2005... 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus CHARLES C. MANN In this sweeping tome, Mann endeavors to dispel the myth that Native Americans were a people suspended in time before the arrival of European explorers. On the contrary,...

Just a little gas.(Letter to the Editor)
August 20, 2005... "Energy on Ice" (SN: 6/25/05, p. 410) states that the gas-hydrate deposit near Prudhoe Bay "contains more than 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas. That's twice the total amount of natural gas consumed annually in the United States.... "Does it...

Priorities in order.(Letter to the Editor)
August 20, 2005... Regarding "Sleepless in SeaWorld: Some newborns and morns forgo slumber" (SN: 7/2/05, p. 3), why should the whale study lead scientists to "change the way we view sleep"? Among whales, the priority is that babies not drown in the first weeks of...

Comment clarification.(Letter to the Editor)
August 20, 2005... My comments cited in "Boning Up: Tissue for grafts grown inside the body" (SN: 7/30/05, p. 68) were taken out of context. My original comments were: "The authors present a clever strategy to generate autologous bone.... This approach is very...

Turning back time: embryonic stem cell rejuvenates skin cell.
August 27, 2005... By fusing an embryonic stem cell with an adult skin cell, researchers have created cells that retain valuable embryonic characteristics but carry the adult cell's genes. This new method might eventually lead to stem cell lines that match a...

Warm ice: frozen water forms at room temperature.
August 27, 2005... Zap a layer of water with a strong electric field and, experiments dating back years suggest, some of the liquid freezes, even at comfortable, shirtsleeve temperatures. New experiments indicate that the electric field needn't be so strong. If...

First supper: X rays may mark eating habits of baby black holes.
August 27, 2005... To announce their arrival, black holes give off a birth cry--an energetic flash of light known as a gamma-ray burst. Now, astronomers have evidence that just minutes later, the newborns emit powerful X-ray burps as well. NASA's Swift...

A seasoned ancient state: Chinese site adds salt to civilization's rise.(ancient salt making site)
August 27, 2005... At an ancient Chinese settlement straddling a river, scientists have uncovered what they regard as the earliest strong archaeological evidence of salt making, dating to 4,000 or so years ago. This discovery highlights salt's central role in...

Dark side of a blood builder: hormone linked to diabetic blindness.(erythropoietin)
August 27, 2005... Since 1989, physicians have prescribed the hormone erythropoietin (EPO) to combat anemia from blood loss, kidney failure, and cancer treatments. This compound orchestrates red blood cell production. But researchers in Japan now report that EPO...

Presto, change-o: new solutions could clean up chemistry.(turn oil in to water)
August 27, 2005... In a feat that would be alchemy if it weren't clever chemistry, scientists have developed a simple technique to switch an oil-like solvent into a waterlike one. The approach provides chemists a way to use the same solvent system for a diversity...

Seafloor features steered tsunamis.(Brief Article)
August 27, 2005... Tsunamis circled the globe after a magnitude 9.3 earthquake struck the Indian Ocean last Dec. 26 (see p. 136). However, those waves didn't spread evenly, says Vasily Titov of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle....

What's that knocking? Sound evidence offered for long-lost woodpecker.(ivory-billed woodpeckers)
August 27, 2005... Cornell University's Laboratory of Ornithology has released recordings from Arkansas of possible calls and drumming by one or more ivory-billed woodpeckers. The release will fuel a new round in the debate over whether the bird, long...

Earthshaking event: lessons from the temblor that produced tsunamis and other global effects.
August 27, 2005... Dec. 26, 2004 dawned calm in Southeast Asia, but things didn't stay that way for long. At 7:59 a.m. local time, deep beneath the seafloor west of Sumatra, two of Earth's tectonic plates began to slip past one another, releasing stress that had...

Targeted attack: scientists declare war on a protein implicated in some stubborn forms of cancer.(cancer research)
August 27, 2005... A rose may be a rose, no matter what you call it, but cancer does not follow the same rules. Although every cancer arises from an uncontrolled reproduction of cells, tumors can appear in nearly any body part. In different people, tumors in the...

Stroke site is often not right.(right side of brain)(Brief Article)
August 27, 2005... Thousands of strokes in the right half of the brain may go unrecognized because their symptoms are less distinctive than those of left-side strokes, a statistical analysis suggests. In most people, left-side strokes can affect coordination in...

Enceladus: small but feisty.(Saturn's moon)(Brief Article)
August 27, 2005... Saturn's moon Enceladus, a tiny outpost in the frigid outer solar system, ought to be cold and geologically dead. But observations by the Cassini spacecraft, which flew within 175 kilometers of Enceladus on July 14 (SN: 7/80/05, p. 69), reveal...