Science News articles from December 2003

Science News archives from December 2003

CT scan works as well as colonoscopy.(No Scope)
December 6, 2003... For anyone seeking to avoid the unpleasantness and discomfort of a colonoscopy, here's good news: A computed tomography (CT) scan that provides a "virtual colonoscopy" of the large intestine is just as adept at detecting signs of cancer as is a...

Sun storms spawn magnetic reversal.(Solar Flip-Flops)
December 6, 2003... Every 11 years, the sun reaches a peak in its turbulent activity, sporting huge numbers of sunspots and hurling many billion-ton clouds of charged particles into space. At about the same time, the sun's magnetic poles flip: North becomes south,...

Atmospheric scientists dissect cirrus clouds.(Cloud chemistry)
December 6, 2003... The formation of wispy cirrus clouds is not a simple matter. New research is revealing more about the conditions needed to generate these high-altitude ice clouds and illustrates new ways that pollutants can have consequences many kilometers up...

Virus attacks cancer, spares normal cells.(Seek and Destroy)(Sindbis virus research)
December 6, 2003... A mosquito-borne virus isolated 5 decades ago in the Egyptian town of Sindbis could become the latest weapon in the battle against cancer. A seemingly harmless strain of the virus homes in on cancer cells and destroys them, according to a...

Depression fix feeds off patient-therapist bond.(Allies in Therapy)
December 6, 2003... In an era of intense competition for health-care dollars, psychotherapists often characterize their techniques as scientifically grounded and capable of alleviating specific mental ailments. These professionals increasingly consult manuals that...

Proud paleontologists proclaim: it's a boy!(fossil of ostracod discovered)(Brief Article)
December 6, 2003... Ancient marine sediments have yielded what scientists contend is the world's oldest fossil of malehood. Fossils of ostracods, a type of aquatic bivalve crustacean, typically include only shells, says David J. Siveter of England's University of...

Experiment upends normal frequency shift.(Doppler Toppler)
December 6, 2003... The pitch of a blaring car horn rises as the vehicle approaches and falls as it moves away. That's the Doppler effect, and it also occurs for electromagnetic radiation, enabling police to catch speeders with radar guns and astronomers to...

Salt marsh snails plow leaves, fertilize fungus.(New Farmers)
December 6, 2003... People and insects aren't the only creatures on the planet that can grow a fungus for dinner. A salt marsh snail works the leaves of a plant in what researchers say looks like a simple form of farming. The snail Littoraria irrorata saws...

Wings of change: shape-shifting aircraft may ply future skyways.(Cover Story)
December 6, 2003... Like a bird, the world's very first airplane had flexible wings. The lightweight wood, cloth, and wire flyer, built by Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright and first flown on Dec. 17, 1903, was steered and stabilized by pulleys and cables that...

Tiny bubbles: vesicles that cells spit out are implicated in cancer and AIDS.
December 6, 2003... When Gustavio Romanio looked through his microscope last year, the University of Michigan cancer researcher was perplexed. Tumor cells that had been treated with chemotherapy agents had bubblelike objects at their edges. These microscopic...

Two markers may predict heart risk.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
December 6, 2003... Two proteins that play a role in inflammation may serve as indicators of a person's risk of heart disease and stroke. The immune system proteins, called interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), help orchestrate the body's...

Martian sand ripples are taller than Earth's.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
December 6, 2003... New data gathered by a Mars-orbiting probe suggest that large ripples in sandy areas of the Red Planet are more than twice as tall as their terrestrial counterparts. Single images taken from space rarely reveal the height of topographic...

Plants, bats magnify neurotoxin in Guam.(Biology)(Brief Article)
December 6, 2003... Researchers have turned up new evidence that a natural toxin that grows more concentrated as it moves up the food chain might have caused a puzzling spike in a neurodegenerative disease in Guam. Starting in the mid-20th century, this...

Nanotech bill gives field a boost.(Science And Society)(21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act)(Brief Article)
December 6, 2003... In a vote of confidence that nanotechnology might be the next big thing, Congress has passed the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act. The law authorizes $3.7 billion in spending on nanotechnology over 4 years starting Oct....

Awesome Things to Make with Recycled Stuff.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... HEATHER SMITH AND JOE RHATIGAN As the winter months set in and children look for something to do, this guide provides dozens of ideas for things to create out of recycled items around the house. With an emphasis on teaching kids to reduce,...

A Benjamin Franklin Reader.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... WALTER ISAACSON The author of a highly regarded biography of Franklin published earlier this year follows up with this collection of writings penned by Franklin himself, including his autobiography. The scores of essays and letters...

Dinosaurus: The Complete Guide to Dinosaurs.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... STEVE PARKER Featuring profiles of more than 700 dinosaur species, this encyclopedia documents dinosaurs' natural habitats. Large, vivid illustrations grace every page and accompany data indicating how dinosaurs lived, what they ate, how...

Everything and More: A Compact History of [Infinity].(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... DAVID FOSTER WALLACE Wallace is best known for his works of fiction, including Infinite Jest, but his interest in math and formal systems led him to tackle the confounding yet compelling story of infinity. His tone is different from that...

The Snowflake: Winter's Secret Beauty.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... KENNETH LIBBRECHT AND PATRICIA RASMUSSEN Ten thousand feet above Earth's surface, a snowflake-ice formed around a nucleus of dust--begins its long, winding descent to the ground. These symmetrical snow crystals fall by the billions,...

Sojourner: An Insider's View of the Mars Pathfinder Mission.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 6, 2003... ANDREW MISHKIN The images sent back from Mars via the Sojourner rover granted Earthlings a thrilling first view of the Red Planet's terrain. Mishkin has worked for nearly 20 years as a senior systems engineer at NASA'S Jet Propulsion...

No surprise.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 6, 2003... The decline in delinquency, violence, disobedience, and truancy seen in the Cherokee children is quite predictable, and I doubt it has much to do with increased parental supervision ("Poor Relations: Casino windfall reveals poverty's toll on...

About two feet.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 6, 2003... "Magnets, my foot!" (SN: 10/18/03, p.254) makes no mention of the type of magnetic insoles used--multipolar phased array or bipolar--nor the stength. I suffer from peripheral neuropathy, and a set of multi-polar-phased-array-type magnetic...

Think snow.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 6, 2003... "Do Arctic diets protect prostates?" (SN: 10/18/03, p.253) discuss the disease in Inuit men in arctic Alaska, Greenland, and Canada. Given the way temperature affects sperm production in the testicles, have the investigators considered any...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
December 6, 2003... The image on page 332 in "Vision Seekers"(SN: 11/22/03, p. 331), to conform to the caption, should have had the top row of faces on the bottom. Also, Daphne Maurer and Catherine J. Mondloch should have been identified as psychologists at...

New technique discerns emeralds' beginnings.(Gemstone Geography)
December 13, 2003... Once an emerald leaves its country of origin and circulates around the world, the gem's provenance becomes murky. Scientists have now developed a nondestructive method for determining the source of an emerald, even down to the mine from which...

Blood reveals signs of pancreatic cancer.(Model Mice)
December 13, 2003... By the time you find out, it's usually too late. Almost all people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer succumb quickly to the disease, which spreads aggressively to the liver and other organs. Researchers have for the first time created mice...

Magnetic links between sun and Earth last hours.(Breach of the Shield)
December 13, 2003... Each time the sun hurls a planet-size cloud of charged particles toward Earth, there's a potential for power outages and satellite damage. But it's when the magnetic field carried by these billion-ton clouds points opposite to Earth's magnetic...

Pesticide may hinder development in boys.(Slowing Puberty?)
December 13, 2003... Chronic exposure to a widely used pesticide may delay sexual maturity in boys, according to a new study in India. Endosulfan is an organochlorine used around the world to protect squash, melons, strawberries, and other produce. A 2001...

Lifelong inhibitions hasten rodents' deaths.(Worried to Death)
December 13, 2003... Some animals shy away from novel settings all their lives, preferring the predictability of familiar surroundings. Although this can be a safe strategy in the short run, it may have a fatal drawback down the line. A new study finds that...

C-reactive protein may presage hypertension.(Risk Profile)
December 13, 2003... A protein that shows up in inflammation may signal risk of high blood pressure, researchers report in the first large-scale trial to link the two disorders. The compound, called C-reactive protein (CRP), has already been implicated in...

Cryptic fungi protect chocolate-tree leaves.(Sweet Lurkers)
December 13, 2003... A hidden world of fungi abounds inside healthy leaves, and scientists are beginning to learn what it's doing there. A research team reports that in tree leaves, these fungi, called endophytes, can limit damage from attacking disease agents. ...

Ketones to the rescue: fashioning therapies from an adaptation to starvation.
December 13, 2003... In times of plenty, both the mind and the body thrive. But deprived of basic sustenance, the mind perishes before the body does. That's not New Age philosophy; it's basic metabolic chemistry. While most of the body manages food shortages with...

Warm-blooded plants? Ok, there's no blood, but they do make their own heat.
December 13, 2003... "The dead-horse arum of Corsica looks and smells like the south end of a horse that died going north," says Roger Seymour. He's actually talking about a plant, and a more prosaic soul might add that it belongs to the same family as calla lilies...

Hints emerge of a four-quark particle.(Physics)(Brief Article)
December 13, 2003... Physicists at accelerators in Japan and the United States have detected a subatomic particle that may be unlike any seen before. Some evidence suggests that the particle contains two pairs of more fundamental particles--quarks and...

Nanoparticles hunt down and kill tumors.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
December 13, 2003... An innovative therapy that uses gold nanoparticles to destroy tumors could someday offer patients a new weapon against cancer, recent animal studies suggest. Researchers at Rice University in Houston injected gold-coated silica spheres into...

Alien stars pass close to home.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
December 13, 2003... Stars from an alien galaxy are raining down on our own Milky Way and passing just a few hundred light-years from Earth. That's the conclusion of astronomers who have mapped the extent of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, one of two dwarf galaxies...

Panel turns critical eye on testosterone.(Science And Society)(Brief Article)
December 13, 2003... Existing scientific evidence does not justify claims that testosterone treatments can relieve or prevent certain age-related problems in men, a panel of specialists has concluded. On Nov. 12, the panel, formed by the Institute of Medicine (IOM)...

Spying a planet in star's dusty veil.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
December 13, 2003... To examine the dust disk encircling a young star 330 light-years away, scientists at the University of Arizona in Tucson used an emerging technique called nulling interferometry to block out the star's light. When they looked further, they...

Genome made quickly from scratch.(Genetics)(Brief Article)
December 13, 2003... Scientists have found a way to rapidly synthesize the entire genome of a virus. To construct the sequence, which consists of 5,386 DNA building blocks, or base pairs, strung into a single chromosome, J. Craig Venter of the Institute for...

The Edge of Infinity: Supermassive Black Holes in the Universe.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 13, 2003... At one time, supermassive black holes were viewed as the most destructive force in nature. Now, astronomers view these phenomena as critical tools that built the early universe. Black holes may have spawned bursts of stars, planets, and even...

Empire State Building: When New York Reached for the Skies.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 13, 2003... Built in just 18 months at the hands of more than 3,500 workers, the Empire State Building became the tallest building in the world and one of New York City's most prominent icons. Mann details its rise, from its inception in the late 1920s to...

Everything's Relative: And Other Fables from Science and Technology.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 13, 2003... Rothman charges scientists with being self-aggrandizing at the expense of the sometimes scores of others who contribute in some way to each discovery or advance. He turns away from the currently popular approach of taking a whole book to tell...

Ink Sandwiches, Electric Worms: And 37 Other Experiments for Saturday Science.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 13, 2003... The author of Vacuum Bazookas, Electric Rainbow Jelly follows up with another set of fun yet informative science demonstrations. Rather than just listing the necessary tools and instructions for performing an experiment, Downie provides much...

Supervision: A New View of Nature.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 13, 2003... From start to finish, this stunning celebration of science imagery shows how scientific instrumentation has helped us transcend our own sensory limitations, revealing aspects of nature to which our unassisted senses are blind. The book's more...

This is Not a Weasel: A Close Look at Nature's Most Confusing Terms.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 13, 2003... Homonyms, such as their and there and our and hour, are easily discernable. However, we can be perplexed as to whether quite dissimilar words mean the same thing--especially when it comes to plants and animals. Sweet potato versus yam is one...

Edgy approach.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 13, 2003... I feel that there is a major factor that nobody takes into account when modern people set out to replicate possible ancient voyages ("Erectus Ahoy," SN: 10/18/03, p. 248). It is that they're attempting to get from point A to point B, which they...

Damned if it doesn't.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 13, 2003... The proposed Policy Market Analysis (PAM) project might be useful if it sparks interest in market limitations ("Best Guess: Economists explore betting markets as prediction tools," SN: 10/18/03, p. 251). The stock market may have quickly...

Correction.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
December 13, 2003... Because of an error in the referenced research article, "Chicken Little? Study cites arsenic in poultry" (SN: 10/25/03, p. 259) overstated the tolerable intake of inorganic arsenic. A United Nations committee recommends consumption of no more...

Orbiting telescope views infrared universe.(Cool Cosmos)(Spitzer Space Telescope observations)
December 20, 2003... Astronomers this week unveiled some really cool images--along with some positively chilling spectra. The new images include pictures of a hidden stellar nursery and the first spectra ever taken of organic material in a remote galaxy. An...

Lupus patients exhibit signs of heart disease.(Cardiac Connection)
December 20, 2003... Doctors have long suspected that people with lupus have a heightened risk of heart attack Now, two major studies reveal more early signs of atherosclerosis in the blood vessels of people with the autoimmune disease than in healthy participants....

Severe storms can lift smoke into stratosphere.(Ash Clouds)
December 20, 2003... New field observations, satellite images, and computer models are steering some scientists toward a surprising conclusion: A severe thunderstorm, enhanced by the heat from a huge forest fire, can boost soot, Smoke, and other particles as high...

Liquid Crystal Sensor plays nature's game.(Crystal Clear)
December 20, 2003... Thanks to billions of years of evolution, cells are remarkably adept at detecting pathogens or toxic chemicals in the environment. Taking advantage of this natural surveillance capability, researchers have incorporated components of cell...

German cave yields Stone Age figurines.(Bones of Invention)
December 20, 2003... Excavations in caves in southwestern Germany are carving out a new chapter in art prehistory. Most recently, researchers sifting through dirt that had been dug out of the Hohle Fels cave uncovered three tiny figurines that were sculpted from...

Vibrated goo mimics slithery motions.(Gel Bots?)
December 20, 2003... A physicist's hunch about snail locomotion is inspiring a new way to make robots--from goop. Experiments show that matchstick-size slivers of hydrogel, the type of material used for soft contact lenses, can ooze along like snails, slither like...

Harvest may be too heavy to last.(Brazil Nut Loss Looms)
December 20, 2003... What are now rich forest areas for harvesting Brazil nuts might wane into an impoverished old age unless harvesters change their ways, warns a large international group of scientists. Brazil nuts alone among internationally traded seed...

Bookish math: statistical tests are unraveling knotty literary mysteries.(stylometry)
December 20, 2003... "The very thing!" exclaimed Professor Wogglebug, bounding into the air and upsetting his gold inkwell. "The very next ideal!" Devotees of Frank L. Baum's classic children's books would quickly recognize the above excerpt as the opening of...

Undignified science: well-intentioned research often takes unseemly turns.
December 20, 2003... There's an old saying that no good deed goes unpunished. Here's a related bit of sadomasochistic wisdom: No research finding, good or not, goes public without eventually yielding unforeseen consequences that leave researchers either shaking...

Dune leapfrogging is deciphered.(Physics)(behavior of sand dunes)(Brief Article)
December 20, 2003... Physicists have unraveled how certain wind-driven sand dunes in Morocco and Peru apparently tunnel through slower dunes. Barchan dunes are massive, crescent-shaped sand piles that move across windswept deserts at speeds up to tens of meters...

Glow with the flow.(Technology)(development of small hydroelectric batteries)(Brief Article)
December 20, 2003... A new way to use flowing water to generate electricity may lead to gadget-size, hydroelectric batteries. So say engineers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, who have powered a tiny lamp by driving water through channels only about twice...

Did rivers once run on the Red Planet?(Astronomy)(Mars)(Brief Article)
December 20, 2003... A fan-shaped region of debris on Mars is providing new evidence that the planet, now bone-dry, once had persistent rivers or lakes. Images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft show what appear to be ancient sedimentary deposits that have...

Baboons demonstrate social proficiency.(Anthropology)(Brief Article)
December 20, 2003... Wild baboons may look fierce and uncouth, but don't underestimate their social aptitude, suggest two studies in the Nov. 14 Science. Previous research showed that female baboons recognize the voices of close maternal relatives. The animals...

Warning issued for trauma debriefing.(Behavior)(Brief Article)
December 20, 2003... Efforts to get firefighters, disaster survivors, and others to talk about traumatic events immediately after such experiences, with an emphasis on venting emotions, have mushroomed in the past few years. That growth has unfolded despite the...

Hard mattresses not best for back pain.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
December 20, 2003... Mattresses rated medium-firm are better for people with chronically sore backs than are firm mattresses, researchers in Spain find. Their report in the Nov. 15 Lancet contradicts the long-held view that harder is better when it comes to beds...

Drug particle delivers insulin on demand.(Biomaterials)(injectable polymer particles)(Brief Article)
December 20, 2003... Chemical engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed injectable polymer particles that can store and release insulin in the body in response to changes in blood-glucose concentrations. The particles are crafted...

New materials take the heat.(Photovoltaics)(dyed inorganic nanoparticles improved)(Brief Article)
December 20, 2003... Silicon is the workhorse material for solar cells, but some researchers have been developing inorganic nanoparticles combined with dye molecules as a potentially cheaper alternative. However, high temperatures and prolonged exposure to light...

8 Preposterous Propositions: From the Genetics of Homosexuality to the Benefits of Global Warming.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 20, 2003... ROBERT EHRLICH In a follow-up to Nine Crazy Ideas in Science, physics professor Ehrlich continues to explore the science behind some ideas that may seem dubious. This time, he takes up issues that are controversial enough to "offend just...

A Century of Innovation: Twenty Engineering Achievements That Transformed Our Lives.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 20, 2003... GEORGE CONSTABLE AND BOB SOMERVILLE During the past 100 years, society has been transformed by the efforts and magnificent accomplishments of engineers. The National Academy of Engineering celebrates feats such as electricity, the...

Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 20, 2003... WILLIAM R. SHEA AND MARIANO ARTIGAS Almost everyone is familiar with the 1633 Inquisition in Rome of Galileo, during which the Catholic Church condemned him for teaching that Earth is in motion and revolves around the sun. Shea and Artigas...

How to Keep Dinosaurs.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 20, 2003... ROBERT MASH This tongue-in-cheek guide is an entertaining and informative look at how dinosaurs lived. Geared toward older children, How to Keep Dinosaurs, is written as a pet-owner's manual, but in this case, the pets are dinosaurs....

Tropical Flowering Plants: A Guide to Identification and Cultivation.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 20, 2003... KIRSTEN ALBRECHT LLAMAS With the scholarship of a botany textbook and the beauty and how-to advice of a fine gardening book, this encyclopedia catalogs a wide variety of plants that thrive in Florida, the Gulf Coast, California, and...

Significant issue.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 20, 2003... It is quite sad that your otherwise-excellent publication systematically fails to report error bars in your reports. Time and again I read articles and am left wondering whether the effect reported is even statistically significant. As just one...

No dark secret.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 20, 2003... In 1993, Israeli physicist Moti Milgrom showed an adjustment to the way gravity is calculated that would make dark matter go away in Newton's system for calculating gravity. If Milgrom's math were used in the survey for dark matter in "Cosmic...

Six-foot-deep symbolism.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 20, 2003... A simpler explanation for ancient humans' use of red ocher might be cosmetics, much as in modern mortuary practice ("Stone Age Code Red: Scarlet symbols emerge in Israeli Cave," SN: 11/1/03, p. 277). A dusting of red ocher would offset the blue...

Correction.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
December 20, 2003... A name was misspelled in "Tiny Bubbles" (SN: 12/6/03, p. 363). The University of Michigan cancer researcher mentioned at the top of the story is Gustavo R. Rosania.

Fighting off the viruses.(Science News Of the year)(Editorial)
December 20, 2003... A couple decades ago, if someone had asked whether you'd heard about "that new virus," you'd have known that they were concerned about a health threat. This year, you'd have needed to ask, "Medical or computer?" On both viral fronts, 2003 was...

Anthropology & archaeology.(Science News Of the year)
December 20, 2003... Human roots The discoverers of 160,000-year-old Homo sapiens skulls in Ethiopia said that their finds underscore humanity's evolution in Africa independently of Neandertals (163: 371 *). Primate gene Scientists identified a hybrid gene...

Astronomy.(Science News Of the year)
December 20, 2003... Shuttle tragedy The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated minutes before it was scheduled to land on Feb. 1 (163: 83 *). All seven of its crew members died. Tests revealed that the shuttle had been doomed since liftoff, when a piece of loose...

Behavior.(Science News Of the year)
December 20, 2003... Bad read Scientists identified the first gene that appears to foster the development of dyslexia (164: 131 *). Memory clues Experiments suggested that a common biological mechanism boosts memories of emotional events and blocks recall of...

Biomedicine.(Science News Of the year)
December 20, 2003... Hormone quandary Elderly women taking estrogen and synthetic progesterone are more likely to have strokes and develop Alzheimer's disease than are women not taking the hormones (163: 341). However, a drug related to progesterone helps some...

Botany & zoology.(Science News Of the year)
December 20, 2003... Enforcer beans In a novel study of partnerships between species, researchers found that soybeans punish root-dwelling microbes that don't fulfill their obligation (164: 221). First impressions In a new wrinkle on how females develop mate...

Cell & molecular biology.(Science News Of the year)
December 20, 2003... Steroid shocker Invertebrates have proteins that respond to estrogen and other steroids, indicating that this hormonal system evolved earlier than previous data had indicated (164: 180). Finding phages Microbiologists discovered that...

Chemistry.(Science News Of the year)
December 20, 2003... No assembly required Using DNA as a scaffold, researchers devised a way of creating carbon-nanotube transistors that self-assemble in a test tube--a feat that paves the way for more-complex circuits made from these nanocomponents (164: 324)....

Earth science.(Science News Of the year)
December 20, 2003... Clearing the air Chemical analyses of Earth's lower atmosphere showed that the overall concentration of bromine, a component of some potent ozone-destroying chemicals, has dropped by 5 percent since peaking in 1998 (164: 118). Slow...

Environment & ecology.(Science News Of the year)
December 20, 2003... Drinking safely New low-cost, at-home treatments for microbe-contaminated drinking water could save millions of lives in developing countries (163: 136, 403 *). Air sickness Studies of outwardly healthy people showed harmful effects from...