Science News articles from December 2004

Science News archives from December 2004

Stressed to death: mental tension ages cells.(This Week)
December 4, 2004... A new study puts evidence behind the old adage that stressful experiences can give a person gray hairs. Scientific data now indicate that prolonged psychological stress might cause a person's cells to age, and possibly die, significantly faster...

Grow-slow potion: pheromone keeps bee youngsters youthful.(This Week)
December 4, 2004... After more than 10 years of searching, researchers have identified a compound produced by the senior workers in a honeybee colony that prolongs the time that teenage bees stay home babysitting. Honeybee workers spend their first few weeks...

South American surprise: ancient farmers settled in Uruguay's wetlands.(This Week)
December 4, 2004... One of the earliest complex societies in South America flourished in an unexpected corner of the continent. Around 4,200 years ago, an extensive, carefully designed farming settlement was built in the wetlands of what's now southeastern...

Stones-be-gone: gene-targeting drug restores chemical balance protecting the gallbladder.(This Week)
December 4, 2004... A drug that revs up a gene responsible for regulating gallbladder chemistry can prevent gallstones from forming, according to a mouse study. Gallstones are made of cholesterol, a normal component of the bile stored in the gallbladder. The...

Snow blow: image of Mount Everest from orbit captures enormous plume.(This Week)(Brief Article)
December 4, 2004... Scientists are viewing a photograph of an immense plume of snow wafting from Mount Everest to learn how winds redistribute precipitation in the Himalayas and other mountain chains. On Jan. 28, as astronauts on the International Space...

Antioxidant booster: protein curbs lung damage caused by smoke.(This Week)
December 4, 2004... By activating dozens of genes that combat free radicals and toxic pollutants in cigarette smoke, a naturally produced protein called Nrf2 can stand as a stalwart defender against emphysema, a new study suggests. The finding indicates that...

DNA bar codes: life under the scanner.
December 4, 2004... Just 2 months ago, Bob Ward took a grueling, 27-hour flight from his hometown in Tasmania, to visit his good friend Paul Hebert in Guelph, Ontario. But rather than bringing his host a souvenir jar of Vegemite sandwich spread or a bottle of fine...

Take a chance: scientists put randomness to work.
December 4, 2004... Since the dawn of written history, people have exploited the randomness of a roll of a die to inject their games with the thrill of the unpredictable. Today, randomness is finding myriad other uses, such as encrypting credit card numbers in...

Inhaled particles damage vascular lining.(Environment)(Brief Article)
December 4, 2004... Though arteries and veins move large flows of blood around the body, tinier vessels called arterioles distribute blood to the capillaries in tissues. To regulate this microflow minute to minute according to tissues' needs, arterioles...

Clock genes regulate blood sugar.(Biology)(Brief Article)
December 4, 2004... Numerous studies have shown that what we eat is vital to our health. New research suggests that when we eat may be just as important. In mice, as in people, blood sugar concentration rises to a peak once a day. Mealtimes strongly influence...

Some temblors probably were triggered by tides.(Earth Science)(Brief Article)
December 4, 2004... Detailed analyses of past large earthquakes suggest that some of the temblors may have been triggered by strong tides in Earth's crust and its oceans. Such tides, induced by the gravitational attraction of the sun and moon, cause...

Preventive drugs protect children.(Malaria)
December 4, 2004... Giving children a course of antimalarial drugs during the rainy season in malaria zones prevents many from contracting the mosquito-borne disease, researchers report. Since there is no established malaria vaccine, this approach might provide a...

Probing a parasite for vulnerability.(Sleeping Sickness)
December 4, 2004... In their quest to find a weakness in the single-celled parasite that causes African sleeping sickness, researchers have identified an enzyme that appears indispensable to the microbe's survival. Disabling this enzyme could offer a novel...

Soldiers in Iraq coming down with parasitic disease.(Parasitology)(Brief Article)
December 4, 2004... Hundreds of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have contracted leishmaniasis, a parasite-borne infection spread by sand flies, according to military physicians. Symptoms usually are limited to skin ulcers, but two soldiers serving in...

Extensive test shows cholera vaccine works.(Cholera)(Brief Article)
December 4, 2004... A reliable, long-lasting vaccine against cholera has eluded medical science. The best vaccine available during the 20th century was scrapped in the 1970s because it offered only weak protection. In the 1980s, Swedish researchers developed an...

Astonishing Animals: Extraordinary Creatures and the Fantastic Worlds They Inhabit.(Brief Article)
December 4, 2004... ASTONISHING ANIMALS: Extraordinary creatures and the Fantastic Worlds They Inhabit TIM FLANNERY AND PETER SCHOUTEN Flannery and Schouten look beyond the typical zoo animals with which we are most familiar in order to profile...

Exercises for the Whole Brain: Neuron Builders to Stimulate and Entertain Your Visual, Math, and Executive-Planning Skills.(Brief Article)
December 4, 2004... EXERCISES FOR THE WHOLE BRAIN Neuron Builders to Stimulate and Entertain Your Visual, Math, and Executive-Planning Skills ALLEN D. BRAGDON AND LEONARD FELLOWS Bragdon and Fellows cite recent research indicating that the best way to...

Football Physics: The Science of the Game.(Brief Article)
December 4, 2004... FOOTBALL PHYSICS: The Science of the Game TIMOTHY GAY The average Sunday-afternoon fan watches the events on the gridiron for the action, the athleticism, and maybe the really hard hits. But Gay, who has been both a collegiate football...

Earth: An Intimate History.(Brief Article)
December 4, 2004... EARTH: An Intimate History RICHARD FORTEY Some people say that geology is as boring as a bag of rocks. But with a naturalist's view of the land and a geologist's understanding of gradual change, Fortey does an admirable job of...

Uncorked: The science of Champagne.(Brief Article)
December 4, 2004... UNCORKED: The science of Champagne GERARD LIGER-BELAIR Outside of figuring how to avoid a headache or making sure not to take out an eye with a flying cork, most of us don't spend a lot of time thinking about champagne. Liger-Belair...

Shouting about decaf?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 4, 2004... As a decal drinker, I found myself shouting, "What about caffeine"?" as I read "Coffee's curious heart effects" (SN: 10/2/04, p. 222). How can any report not, at least, mention its involvement or lack thereof? GREG TULLO, RALEIGH, N.C. ...

Pretty packaging.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 4, 2004... I was pleased to read that one of the most mathematically pretty sphere-stacking arrangements (the lovely 24-cell) occurs in four dimensions ("Oddballs: It's easier to pack spheres in some dimensions than in others," SN: 10/2/04, p. 219). The...

Tipping points.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 4, 2004... In "Original Microbrews" (SN: 10/2/04, p. 216), several statements regarding my archaeological-chemical research are inaccurate. Very good evidence for barley beer has been obtained, as my laboratory published in 1992 (SN: 11/5/92, p. 360). In...

China's fermented past: pottery yields signs of oldest known wine.(This Week)
December 11, 2004... Here's a discovery worth toasting: Chemical analyses of pottery fragments from a prehistoric village in northern China indicate that people living there between 8,000 and 9,000 years ago concocted a fermented, winelike drink from rice, honey,...

Cloning milestone: monkey embryos urged to stem cell stage.(This Week)
December 11, 2004... Researchers have coaxed cloned rhesus macaque embryos to grow to the blastocyst stage, a developmental benchmark in which cells form a hollow, fluid-filled ball. The accomplishment marks the furthest point that scientists have yet reached in...

Disks of dust: planet-stuff surrounds other sunlike stars.(This Week)
December 11, 2004... Two orbiting observatories have for the first time homed in on planetary debris circling sunlike stars. The Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light image of the dusty debris around a young star with a sunlike mass. Colliding...

Smog clogs arteries: pollution does lasting harm to blood vessels.
December 11, 2004... There's a new reason to worry about air pollution. Known for many years to harm the lungs, air pollution also damages the circulatory system, a study now suggests. A reexamination of data collected for various health care trials in the Los...

Swift lift: birds may get a rise out of swirling air.(bird flight)
December 11, 2004... Birds do it, and bees do it. But until recently, scientists thought the birds and bees did it in different ways. We're talking about flying, of course. Researchers have known for years that insects fly thanks to whirlpools of air called...

Color collective: polymer self-assembles into light-emitting film.(This Week)
December 11, 2004... In the past year or so, organic light-emitting diodes have appeared in a handful of products, such as the tiny screens in some cell phones and digital cameras. Manufacturing large and long-lasting flexible displays for computer screens and...

Stemming incontinence: injected muscle cells restore urinary control.(This Week)
December 11, 2004... Stem cells taken from a woman's arm and used to rebuild a pivotal control muscle in her urinary tract can relieve incontinence, medical researchers report. For women, this replenishing of muscle cells offers "a revolutionary therapy," claims...

Remnants of the past: high-tech analyses of ancient textiles yield clues to cultures.
December 11, 2004... In a museum lab, Irene Good is studying pieces of silk from long-lost cloth found at archaeological sites in western Europe and central and south Asia. The material at hand--short lengths of threads that were spun from the cocoons of moths--is...

Explosive tales: a modern look at two old supernovas.(Cover Story)
December 11, 2004... On Oct. 10,1604, a young assistant to the German astronomer Johannes Kepler looked up in the sky and saw a brilliant light that had never been there before. Located in the serpent-bearer constellation Ophiuchus, the object shone brighter than...

Up and down make different workouts.(Fitness)(Brief Article)
December 11, 2004... Hiking on a mountainside gives the heart a health-promoting challenge, but the nature of the benefit depends on whether one is climbing or descending. A study conducted on an Alpine mountainside suggests that going up improves the body's...

Sleeve worn on heart fights failure.(Medical Devices)(Brief Article)
December 11, 2004... Wrapping failing hearts in mesh sleeves might save fives and avert the need for transplants. Researchers have tested a wrap that can be placed around an expanded and dangerously weakened heart. Pressure from the mesh restores the organ to an...

Gamma view of a big blast.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
December 11, 2004... Astronomers have for the first time used extremely high-energy gamma rays to image a celestial body. Paula Chadwick of the University of Durham in England and her colleagues recorded flashes of blue light known as Cerenkov radiation, which...

TB vaccine gets a needed boost.(Biomedicine)(tuberculosis)(Brief Article)
December 11, 2004... An experimental vaccine has proved it can greatly enhance immunity against tuberculosis (TB) in people who were previously vaccinated with the far-from-perfect bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine for TB. BCG was first used more than 80 years...

Recipe for Roman cosmetic revealed.(Archaeology)(Brief Article)
December 11, 2004... Last year, while excavating a 2,000-year-old Roman temple in London, archaeologists discovered a small tin canister filled with white cream. In the Nov. 4 Nature, chemists who have examined the cream conclude that it is an ancient cosmetic face...

Mice smell a mate's immune system.(Biology)(Brief Article)
December 11, 2004... A whiff of urine, sweat, or other body fluids may provide some mammals with a direct view into each other's immune systems, giving them information that could prevent inbreeding, a new study suggests. Researchers have long known that the...

Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 11, 2004... CRIMES AGAINST LOGIC: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders JAMIE WHYTE With a wry wit, Britain-based philosopher Whyte considers how "authorities" on any number of subjects regularly...

Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 11, 2004... FANTASTIC VOYAGE: Live Long Enough to Live Forever RAY KURZWEIL AND TERRY GROSSMAN Within the next 20 years, we will have the technology to stop and perhaps even reverse aging, assert Kurzweil and Grossman. The authors outline three...

The Fly in the Ointment: 70 Fascinating Commentaries on the Science of Everyday Life.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 11, 2004... THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT: 70 Fascinating Commentaries on the Science of Everyday Life JOE SCHWARCZ When he graduated college with a degree in chemistry, Schwarcz knew all about glucose as a molecule but didn't understand how it was used to...

Extreme Weather: a Guide and Record Book.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 11, 2004... EXTREME WEATHER: A Guide and Record Book CHRISTOPHER C. BURT This book is crammed with data, pictures, maps, and details of the science behind the oddities and extremes of nature: from hurricanes and cyclones to colored snow and mud...

What Good Are Bugs? Insects in the Web of Life.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 11, 2004... WHAT GOOD ARE BUGS? Insects in the Web of Life GILBERT WALDBAUER We generally view insects as a nuisance. Yet, as a group, they support virtually every ecosystem by pollinating plants, serving as food for other animals, and disposing of...

Mover Earth.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 11, 2004... I would have thought that it is more likely that Earth's hum creates the weather patterns ("Humming Along: Ocean waves may cause global seismic noise," SN: 10/2/04, p. 212) than the other way around. JUDY ANGEL, GLASGOW, SCOTLAND

Nuclear fallout.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 11, 2004... "Hurrying a nuclear identity switch" (SN: 10/9/04,p. 238) dealt with the alteration of the nuclear decay rate of beryllium-7. I believe you may have misinterpreted the researchers to be saying they had found "the largest such artificial...

Shooting the breeze.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 11, 2004... Because the purpose of wind machines is to take energy out of the wind, it is counterintuitive to find the wind's average velocity increases inside the wind farm ("Change in the Weather? Wind farms might affect local climates," SN: 10/16/04, p....

Correction.(Correction Notice)
December 11, 2004... "One-Celled Socialites" (SN: 11/20/04, p. 330) first correctly refers to Dictyostelium discoideum as a slime room but later calls it a bacterium.

Kibble for thought: dog diversity prompts new evolution theory.(This Week)
December 18, 2004... The wide range of variety in domesticated dogs--from the petite Chihuahua to the monstrous mastiff--has powered a new view of what drives evolution. Scientists have long known that the evolutionary changes that alter a species' appearance...

Immigration blues: born in the USA: mental-health deficit.(This Week)
December 18, 2004... Immigrants to the land of the free may, simply by moving here, end up taxing the mental health of their U.S.-born offspring. A wide array of psychological disorders occurs at a much higher rate among Mexican Americans born in the United States...

People, not robots: panel favors shuttle mission to Hubble.(This Week)
December 18, 2004... Sharply challenging NASA on the issue of safety in space, a National Academy of Sciences panel last week recommended that the space agency use astronauts to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope rather than send a robotic device under a...

Birth dilemma: doctors weigh pros and cons of cesareans.(This Week)
December 18, 2004... Doctors traditionally counseled women who had had a cesarean section against delivering vaginally, even though a mother's recovery time is longer after a cesarean birth. In 1981, only 3 percent of women in the United States who had delivered by...

The birds are falling: avian losses could hit ecosystems hard.(This Week)
December 18, 2004... If many bird populations dip toward extinction in the coming century, as scientists predict, widespread harm could come to ecosystems that depend on these birds to pollinate plants, disperse seeds, scavenge carrion, and control insects. ...

Magnetic bit boost: quantum rewiring for computer memories.(This Week)
December 18, 2004... A quantum-mechanical memory component that might replace the electronic memories used for decades in computers and other gadgets has come closer to practicality, thanks to improvements achieved by research teams in the United States and Japan....

Ancient heights: leaf fossils track elevation changes.(This Week)
December 18, 2004... Using altitude-dependent differences in fossil leaves, geologists have developed a tool that they say can track land elevations over geologic epochs. The scientists plan to use the new technique to better chronicle the rise and fall of mountain...

Sit, stay, speak: a dog gets a rare chance to talk about what's on, and in, his mind.
December 18, 2004... Look at that silver Frisbee hanging up there in the black sky. I can see it through the big square in the wall. I need to grab that thing and bury it in the backyard right now. Then, I'll dig it up tomorrow and chew it into tiny, slobbery...

An electron runs through it: surprising rivulets and ripples complicate the microchip picture.
December 18, 2004... Most paintings or prints lose their definition the closer you get to them. That doesn't happen when you put your nose near the arresting prints of Harvard University physicist Eric J. Heller. The closer you approach Heller's prints, which...

Song fights: when male birds go tune to tune.
December 18, 2004... To make a basic point, let's stroll into an alternative universe where song sparrows sound a little unusual. It's spring, and a young male perched on top of a shrub is belting out, "The hills are alive with the sound of music...." When he...

Growing where they haven't grown before.(Biology)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2004... For the first time, researchers have found the right laboratory conditions for growing mouse precursor cells into sperm. The finding could be a boon to fertility research. Unlike female animals, which are born with a finite supply of eggs,...

A light wrap?(Materials Science)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2004... Materials scientists have created fabrics that can both detect light and conduct electricity, suggesting new light-detecting textiles and novel projection screens. Reporting in the Oct. 14 Nature, Yoel Fink and his colleagues at the...

Trade Center cough is diagnosed.(Respiratory Disease)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2004... Obstructions that trap air deep within the lungs may explain certain breathing difficulties among some people who worked at the site of the World Trade Center following the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001. Air gets similarly trapped in...

Colon scans reveal heart risk.(Screening)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2004... Virtual colonoscopy, a scanning procedure designed to spot cancer-related growths in the colon, may offer a side benefit: identifying heart attacks that are waiting to happen. Radiologists at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., have found that...

Buckyballs store 1s and 0s in new memory device.(Technology)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2004... In pursuit of faster and denser memory chips that might one day enable computers to boot instantly, scientists have created a material that stores bits of data in the soccer ball-shaped carbon molecules known as buckyballs. Research groups...

Bonelike polymer supports stem cells.(Tissue Engineering)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2004... Growing stem cells on polymer scaffolds could be an effective strategy for manufacturing replacement tissues--a piece of bone to repair a defect or a fracture, for instance (SN: 3/6/04, p. 155). However, keeping the cells alive on the scaffold...

Glass materials let Venetian art shine.(Art Conservation)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2004... Sixteenth-century Venetian painters, renowned for their brilliant and colorful works of art, may have borrowed a few tricks from an unlikely source: glassmaking. Recent analyses of several Venetian paintings reveal that the artists mixed glassy...

Mussel glue inspires coating for medical implants.(Biomaterials)(Brief Article)
December 18, 2004... Many medical implants, such as catheters, stents, and other cardiovascular devices, fail because cells stick to them and interfere with their operation. Although researchers have tried coating these devices with antifouling polymers, the coats...

In Other Words: a Language Lover's Guide to the Most Intriguing Words around the World.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 18, 2004... IN OTHER WORDS: A Language Lover's Guide to the Most Intriguing Words around the World Every language is loaded with great descriptive terms that just don't translate into any other language. In some cases, this is because the term has...

John James Audubon: the Making of an American.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 18, 2004... JOHN JAMES AUDUBON: The Making of an American Rhodes, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Making of the Atomic Bomb, has written the first full biography in some 40 years of naturalist-traveler-entrepreneur John James Audubon. That name...

Schrodinger's Rabbits: the Many Worlds of the Quantum.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 18, 2004... SCHRODINGER'S RABBITS: The Many Worlds of the Quantum For decades, physicists have stumbled over questions that stand in the way of their complete understanding of the quantum world. Among the difficulties is finding a way to measure the...

Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 18, 2004... STEALING HISTORY: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World Tomb raiding is a centuries-old practice, but it's no longer a rag tag operation executed by land-based pirates. Today, millions of dollars exchange hands for...

Think fast.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 18, 2004... "Car deaths rise days after terror attacks" (SN: 10/9/04, p. 237) mentions that the traffic volume was reduced following the attacks, yet fails to mention another likely factor in the increased deaths: Less traffic usually results in higher...

Our sun, the healer.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 18, 2004... I found your articles on vitamin D very interesting ("Vitamin Boost," SN: 10/9/04, p. 232; "Vitamin D: What's Enough?" SN: 10/16/04, p. 248). My question now is whether the rays received in a tanning bed can cause the skin to manufacture...

Ending the year right.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 18, 2004... I sincerely thank you for the informative articles you make available. My family and I look forward to Science News, and we always share the knowledge acquired with our friends. We view your publication as a national resource. R.N. MOLINA,...

Science news challenge.(Crossword Puzzle)
December 18, 2004... Every word required for this puzzle appeared in a Science News article during 2004. If you need a hint, check the article by going to the volume and page number listed after each clue. Across 1. Cassini destination (166: 22) 5....

A spectrum of choices.(Science News of the year)
December 18, 2004... In the pages that follow, the writers of Science News have selected what they consider the most compelling stories of 2004. However, visitors to our Web pages at Science News Online have their own favorites. As we track the number of visitors...