Science News articles from December 2006

Science News archives from December 2006

Cancer link: gene regulates progesterone effect on breast cells.(BRCA mutations)
December 2, 2006... Since its discovery in 1994, the BRCA1 gene has given up its secrets grudgingly. Early on, scientists recognized that it kept cancer at bay. Women carrying a mutation in the gene face an extremely high risk of breast and ovarian cancer....

New butterfly: high-alpine species from low-life parents.
December 2, 2006... Little bluish butterflies high in the Sierra Nevada mountains have an unusual history. Researchers report that these insects belong to one of the few animal species known to have arisen from crossbreeding of two other species. ...

Howdy, neighbors: long-term study finds a batch of red dwarfs.(star systems)
December 2, 2006... The galactic neighborhood just got more crowded. Astronomers have found 20 previously unknown star systems that lie within 33 light-years of Earth. All the stars are faint, low-mass objects called red dwarfs, which rank among the most prevalent...

A toast to healthy hearts: wine compounds benefit blood vessels.(University of Glasgow's Alan Crozier on red wine effects )
December 2, 2006... Researchers have identified a class of compounds in red wine that might be responsible for much of the beverage's cardiovascular benefit. These compounds vary in concentration among wines grown in different areas and may explain some regional...

Lead in the water: mapping gets a handle on disinfectant's danger.(lead poisoning)
December 2, 2006... In 1854, Dr. John Snow stopped a cholera outbreak in London by mapping the sick residents' homes and the locations of the city water pumps. Most people who had fallen ill, it turned out, lived near the Broad Street pump, which Snow would later...

Crusty old computer: new imaging techniques reveal construction of ancient marvel.
December 2, 2006... Scientists say that they have figured out the arrangement and functions of nearly all the parts of a mysterious mechanical gadget that was discovered a century ago in a 2,000-year-old shipwreck. Since it was found, the shoe-box-size device...

Stone age role revolution: modern humans may have divided labor to conquer.(neandertals)
December 2, 2006... Chalk up modern humanity's rise and the extinction of Neandertals to a geographic accident. That's the implication of a new analysis of material from previously excavated Stone Age sites. Homo sapiens evolved in Africa's resource-rich...

What's a planet? New riddles beyond the solar system.(Cover story)
December 2, 2006... "I found a planet!" Caltech astronomer Mike Brown remembers exclaiming during a phone call he made to his wife early in 2005. Little did he know that he'd have to eat his words just 18 months later. Brown had found an outer-solar system object...

Inherit the warmer wind: some organisms' genes are changing in step with Earth's climate.
December 2, 2006... While Christina Holzapfel and William Bradshaw were post-doctoral fellows at Harvard University, they discovered a love for each other--and for bogs. The pair used to spend entire days knee-deep in peat, admiring the soupy, muddy scenery. "It's...

Safety practices surveyed.(nanotechnology usage )(Survey)(Brief article)
December 2, 2006... As companies and laboratories work with nanotechnology, they largely rely on the same safety practices that they use when working with conventional chemicals, a survey reports. There are no regulations or voluntary standards for operations...

Oceans reveal secrets of viruses.(University of British Columbia's Curtis Suttle on virus DNA)(Survey)(Brief article)
December 2, 2006... Earth teems with bacteria-eating viruses. There are perhaps 10 times as many of these viruses as of all other living things put together. Yet researchers don't know how many virus species there are, how they are distributed around the globe, or...

Belated angioplasty saves no lives.(heart attack )(Brief article)
December 2, 2006... A common heart procedure doesn't save lives if it is performed more than a couple of days after a heart attack, according to a large international clinical trial. The procedure, angioplasty, has been found to offer benefits when it's done...

Test identifies people at cardiac risk.(electrocardiography helps in determining cardiac arrest)(Brief article)
December 2, 2006... Measurement of an electrical abnormality in the heart aids doctors in determining who is most at risk for cardiac arrest, according to a new study. Computers can detect the abnormality, called T-wave alternans, during an electrocardiogram,...

Meetings.
December 2, 2006... American Heart Association Chicago, Ill. November 12-15 Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Montreal, Quebec, November 6-9

Could Prozac muscle out mussels?(antidepressant drugs effect the population of freshwater mussel )(Brief article)
December 2, 2006... New research raises the possibility that antidepressant drugs may be depressing wild-mussel populations. Freshwater mussel communities are declining in U.S. waters for reasons that remain poorly understood. Scientists at North Carolina...

Sharks, dolphins store pollutants.(flame-retardant chemicals )(Brief article)
December 2, 2006... Flame-retardant chemicals have become ubiquitous in the environment. A new study finds that in Florida's top saltwater predators, such as sharks, concentrations of these contaminants and other persistent industrial chemicals are high and...

No-stick chemicals can mimic estrogen.(perfluorinated compounds)(Brief article)
December 2, 2006... Preliminary data indicate that some of the compounds used to keep water from soaking into raincoats, grease from sopping through microwave-popcorn bags, and foods from sticking to cookware have another notable attribute: They can act like...

Leaden swan song.(trumpeter swans die of eating lead shotgun pellets)(Brief article)
December 2, 2006... Since 1999, more than 2,100 trumpeter swans in northwest Washington and southwest British Columbia have died--about 15 percent of the birds that winter in this region. Nearly 80 percent of the deaths occurred because the birds ate lead shotgun...

Space 50.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 2, 2006... SPACE 50 PIERS BIZONY In just half a century, people have managed to explore the heavens in a way that ancient people never imagined. The space age dawned in 1957 with the launch of the Russian spacecraft Sputnik 1. Since then, people have...

Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 2, 2006... MEALS TO COME: A History of the Future of Food WARREN BELASCO With an ever-expanding world population facing an increasingly imperiled environment, what does the future hold for food production and consumption? Belasco, a professor of...

Dark Cosmos: In Search of Our Universe's Missing Mass and Energy.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 2, 2006... DARK COSMOS: In Search of Our Universe's Missing Mass and Energy DAN HOOPER Amazingly, only 5 percent of the matter in the universe is observable as Earth, other planets, the sun, the stars, and debris. All the rest is invisible, perhaps...

Is Pluto a Planet? A Historical Journey through the Solar System.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 2, 2006... IS PLUTO A PLANET? A Historical Journey through the Solar System DAVID A. WEINTRAUB The discovery of various large objects in the outer solar system has called into question the definition of a planet. In August, an astronomers' group...

Concerns vented.(Letter to the editor)
December 2, 2006... "Venting Concerns: Exploring and protecting deep-sea communities" (SN: 10/7/06, p. 232) barely scratches the surface of the problem. What is stopping someone from gene splicing the disease of choice onto heat-loving bacterium? Something that...

Eruption deduction.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 2, 2006... In the article "Hot, Hotter, Hot: Climate seesawed during dinosaur age" (SN: 10/7/06, p. 228), the explanation for the increased ocean-surface temperature seemed to focus solely on atmospheric effects. I wonder if variations in undersea...

Say no to drugs.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 2, 2006... In the study that was cited in "Life Blood: Drug stops mothers' bleeding after births" (SN: 10/14/06, p. 243), misoprostol was tested as a more practical means of inducing postdelivery contractions in women in developing countries, despite...

Ebola die-off: gorilla losses tallied in central Africa.
December 9, 2006... Between 2001 and 2005, Ebola virus ravaged the gorilla population in a remote section of equatorial Africa. A new analysis suggests that this outbreak, which killed 254 people, also claimed more than 5,500 western-lowland gorillas. Genetic...

Bitter pill: costs surge for new schizophrenia drugs.
December 9, 2006... Medications widely prescribed to treat schizophrenia cost hundreds of dollars more each month than does a less popular, older medication that has similar success at alleviating symptoms of the disorder. That's one conclusion of the latest...

Woods to waters: wildfires amplify mercury contamination in fish.
December 9, 2006... Forest fires mobilize mercury from the soil and, according to new research, can send the toxic metal into nearby streams and lakes where it accumulates in fish. The finding suggests that ecological and health dangers associated with...

Going native: diverse grassland plants edge out crops as biofuel.
December 9, 2006... Mixtures of plants native to prairies can give a better energy return as biofuel than corn and soybeans do, a new study finds. Biofuel production from grassland plants would also result in lower emissions of carbon dioxide and reduced pollution...

Lunar outpost: NASA unveils plans for a return to the moon.
December 9, 2006... This week, NASA announced that it would begin in 2020 to assemble a human outpost on the moon--most likely at the south pole--and intends to complete the base by 2024. While still sketchy, the plans are the most detailed that the agency has...

Extreme tongue: bat excels at saying 'aah'.
December 9, 2006... The new mammalian champ for sticking out its tongue is a small bat from the Andes. The tube-lipped nectar bat zaps out a skinny tongue that can extend a distance 1.5 times its body length, reports Nathan Muchhala of the University of Miami...

Dim harvest: Asian air pollution has limited rice yields.
December 9, 2006... Thick clouds of air pollution over southern Asia and increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere worldwide have restricted rice harvests in India for the past 2 decades, a new analysis suggests. Aerosols, such as...

Milk therapy: breast-milk compounds could be a tonic for adult ills.
December 9, 2006... Catharina Svanborg thought that she already knew how remarkable breast milk is. The immunologist had logged hundreds of lab hours documenting ways in which human milk helps babies fight infections. But when the group decided to use cancerous...

The predator's gaze: scientists explore the frightening world of psychopaths.(Cover story)
December 9, 2006... Derry Mainwaring-Knight holds a special place in the annals of con artistry. Fresh out of an English prison in 1984 after serving time for a rape conviction, Mainwaring-Knight convinced a church rector to enlist in his battle against the spread...

Indian men are prone to insulin resistance.(Brief article)
December 9, 2006... Men from India are more likely than those in other large ethnic groups to have a condition that predisposes them to type 2, or adult-onset, diabetes, a U.S. study shows. The condition, called insulin resistance, arises when a person's...

Pain type matters to brain.(Brief article)
December 9, 2006... Chronic back pain affects different parts of the brain than acute back pain does, magnetic resonance images reveal. Researchers say that the area of the brain responding to chronic pain is also associated with emotional distress. A. Vania...

So long, Surveyor.(Mars Global Surveyor)(Brief article)
December 9, 2006... After 8 years of relaying pictures, topographic maps, magnetic field data, and compositional information from above the Red Planet, NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft appears to have called it quits. The satellite hasn't been heard...

Leggy lizards adapt fast.(Brief article)
December 9, 2006... Sometimes, evolutionary selection can happen within a single generation of a species, research now shows. In response to a new predator, lizards on several Caribbean islands underwent selection first for long legs and then for short legs. ...

Wheat gone wild.(nutrients increase with addition of a gene)(Brief article)
December 9, 2006... Many wild varieties of wheat have higher concentrations of protein, iron, and zinc than domesticated wheat does. Researchers have now identified and cloned a gene that increases wild wheat's nutrients by 10 to 15 percent. The discovery team...

Together and apart.(chemical reaction to split two atoms in molecular hydrogen discovered)(Brief article)
December 9, 2006... Chemists report the first chemical reaction that can split apart and recombine the two atoms in molecular hydrogen without using an expensive metal catalyst. Hydrogen gas is a widely used reagent in the petrochemical and pharmaceutical...

Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 9, 2006... PRIMATES AND PHILOSOPHERS: How Morality Evolved FRANS DE WAAL People tend to think that moral behavior is strictly a veneer hiding the base, animalistic nature of human beings. De Waal, a researcher of primate behavior and long-time writer,...

Writing for Science.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 9, 2006... WRITING FOR SCIENCE ROBERT GOLDBORT Effective communication is an essential part of the scientific process, yet scientists often complain about the inscrutability of writing produced by their peers. Goldbort, an English professor, sets out...

Mummies and Death in Egypt.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 9, 2006... MUMMIES AND DEATH IN EGYPT FRANCOISE DUNAND AND ROGER LICHTENBERG Though mummies have been found in Mexico, Siberia, and on Tenerife Island, none was so painstakingly crafted or adorned as were mummies in Egypt. In the first part of the...

Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Life in the Triassic.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 9, 2006... DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS: Life in the Triassic NICHOLAS FRASER The Permian period ended 248 million years ago with the catastrophic extinction that laid the groundwork for the evolution of amphibians and early dinosaurs. Fraser, a...

The First Copernican: Georg Joachim Rheticus and the Rise of the Copernican Revolution.(Book review)
December 9, 2006... THE FIRST COPERNICAN: Georg Joachim Rheticus and the Rise of the Copernican Revolution DENNIS DANIELSON Copernicus' realization that the sun, and not Earth, is the center of the solar system forever changed astronomy. However, his work...

War is not the answer.(Letter to the editor)
December 9, 2006... "U.S. Population to surpass 300 million" (SAT: 10/7/06, p. 238) concludes with the interesting fact that the only annual drop in U.S. population during the past century "occurred between July 1917 and July 1918, when the country was at war,"...

Father-son event.(Letter to the editor)
December 9, 2006... It is ironic that the father of the current recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry won the prize in medicine ("Nobel prizes recognize things great and small," SN: 10/7/06, p. 229; "Details of molecular machinery gain Nobel," SN: 10/14/06, p....

Fever pitch.(Letter to the editor)
December 9, 2006... Reading "Warming Up to Hyperthermia" (SN: 10/14/06, p. 250) prompted me to consider the biological significance of fever and our impulse to reduce it when given the choice. Isn't it possible that an increase in cancer incidence could be related...

Comet sampler: specimens show that inner and outer solar system mixed.(This Week)
December 16, 2006... Just as the solar system was forming some 4.6 billion years ago, it turned itself inside out. Some of the hottest material, residing so close to the sun that it almost vaporized, sped out to the chilliest reaches of deep space. These bits of...

Sniffle-busting personalities: positive mood guards against getting colds.(This Week)
December 16, 2006... People with generally positive outlooks show greater resistance to developing colds than do individuals who rarely revel in upbeat feelings, a new investigation finds. Frequently basking in positive emotions defends against colds...

Hottest fixer: undersea-vent microbe sets nitrogen record.(This week)
December 16, 2006... A spherical microbe from the weird world of hot-water ocean vents has trumped the nitrogen-processing powers of all organisms previously studied. Like some soil microbes and bacteria living in pea plants and their relatives, the microbe...

Spread out: organic matter scatters carbon nanotubes in water.(This Week)
December 16, 2006... Although carbon nanotubes usually clump in water, they readily disperse when the water contains natural organic matter, researchers report. Their study provides a glimpse of how the nanotubes might behave if released into a waterway. ...

Feel no pain, for real: mutation appears to underlie rare sensation disorder in a Pakistani family.(This Week)
December 16, 2006... Scientists have tracked down a genetic mutation that makes some members of an unusual Pakistani family fail to sense pain. Although pain can be agonizing, it does serve a useful function--it teaches people and animals to avoid dangerous...

Catching flu's drift: vaccines fight unexpected influenza.(This Week)
December 16, 2006... Vaccination can prevent three of every four flu infections, even when the vaccines are imperfectly tailored to block the common wintertime pathogens, a new study shows. That finding is reassuring, researchers say, because it's difficult to...

A fair slice: new method makes for equitable eating.(This Week)
December 16, 2006... Sometimes, a birthday celebration goes awry when a pair of partygoers squabble over the cake, both preferring the slice with the cherry or with the thickest icing. That sort of spat caught the attention of mathematicians, inspiring a new idea...

Peer review under the microscope: one journal's experiment aims to change science vetting.
December 16, 2006... This September, physicist Sergey Kravchenko of Northeastern University in Boston did something that scientists do hundreds of times over the course of their careers: He and his colleagues submitted their latest research findings to a scientific...

Salad doubts: preventing and controlling pathogens on produce.(Cover story)
December 16, 2006... Spinach's healthy reputation suffered a severe blow this fall. On Sept. 13, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta learned that the raw leafy green was the prime suspect in a spate of virulent Escherichia coli infections. The...

A nano-cheese slicer.(TECHNOLOGY)(Brief article)
December 16, 2006... A thin wire cuts through cheese more easily and cleanly than a flat blade does. Now, researchers have built a microscopic version of a cheese slicer--with a carbon nanotube for a wire--that's aimed at making improved slices of frozen cells. ...

The magnetic link between star and planet.(ASTRONOMY)(Brief article)
December 16, 2006... Astronomers say that they have for the first time directly measured the magnetic field of a star known to host a giant planet. Although the magnetic field of the star, called Tan Bootes, is only a few times as strong as that of the sun, it...

Pesticides mimic estrogen in shellfish.(ENVIRONMENT)(Brief article)
December 16, 2006... Two common water pollutants can function in shellfish as the female sex hormone estrogen does. However, new studies show different behavioral effects of those contaminants on two species. Elliptio complanata is a freshwater mussel whose...

South African find gets younger.(ANTHROPOLOGY)(Brief article)
December 16, 2006... The partial skeleton of a human ancestor previously found in South Africa dates to about 2.2 million years ago, roughly 1 million years younger than the original estimates, a new study finds. Researchers had hoped that the australopithecine...

Neandertals' tough Stone Age lives.(ANTHROPOLOGY)
December 16, 2006... Neandertals that 43,000 years ago inhabited what's now northern Spain faced periodic food shortages and possibly resorted to cannibalism to survive, according to a new investigation. These Neandertals evolved shorter, broader faces with a...

Happy fish?(BIOCHEMISTRY)(Brief article)
December 16, 2006... Researchers have detected antidepressant drugs in the brains offish captured downstream of sewage-treatment plants. Pharmaceuticals taint waterways because people excrete many of the drugs they take but treatment plants don't extract all...

Stem cells from bone marrow make new fat.(BIOLOGY)(Brief article)
December 16, 2006... Some body fat comes from stem cells that migrate out of bone marrow, a new study suggests. Bone marrow acts as one of the body's most prolific stem cell factories, pumping out cells that circulate to different parts of the body through the...

Express delivery for cancer drugs.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief article)
December 16, 2006... A new drag-delivery method has dramatically reduced tumors in experiments conducted with mice. Bert Vogelstein and his colleagues at the Johns Hopkins cancer center in Baltimore injected mice with microscopic containers, called liposomes,...

The Scientist As Rebel.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 16, 2006... THE SCIENTIST AS REBEL FREEMAN DYSON In this volume, Dyson, a renowned physicist and writer, presents a collection of his book reviews and essays on a range of scientific and social topics Most of the 29 texts were originally published in...

The Remarkable Life of Explorer and Naturalist William Beebe.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 16, 2006... If Indiana Jones had been a naturalist rather than an archaeologist, he might have been named William Beebe A socialite and celebrity, Beebe was also one of the foremost scientists of the early 20th century Before him, naturalists were...

Mismatch: Why Our World No Longer Fits Our Bodies.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 16, 2006... PETER GLUCKMAN AND MARK HANSON People have adapted to life in virtually every environment on Earth, even the low-oxygen altitudes of the Himalayas However, developmental scientists Gluckman and Hanson suggest that people are currently altering...

Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 16, 2006... FREEDOM AND NEUROBIOLOGY: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power JOHN R. SEARLE The fundamental issues addressed by philosophy have changed little since the beginning of history. However, considerations of consciousness,...

Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 16, 2006... TIME TRAVELER: A Scientist's Personal MISSIOn to Make Time Travel a Reality RONALD L MALLETT What began for Mallett as a boyhood dream to reunite with his deceased father evolved into a lifelong quest to build a time machine. Propelled by...

Familiar pattern.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 16, 2006... I am a retired high school mathematics teacher who has quilted mathematical ideas for over 20 years. Currently, I am working on a quilt called Pascal's Pumpkin. I was totally excited by "Swirling Seas, Crystal Balls: Spirals of triangles...

Check the record.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 16, 2006... The research showing that experimental animals receiving both antibiotics and stomach-acid suppressants colonized large numbers of drug-resistant intestinal bacteria ("Do acid blockers let microbes reach the colon?" SN: 10/21/06, p. 269) might...

They're at it again.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 16, 2006... An entire scientific community could be wrong about something, be expected to know that they are wrong, and for nearly inexplicable reasons persist in being wrong ("Fit to Be Tied: Impatience with string theory boils over," SN: 10/21/06, p....

Collision course?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 16, 2006... "Assault on Andromeda: Nearby galaxy had recent collision" (SN: 10/21/06, p. 261) states, "Several billion years from now, scientists predict, the galaxy and the Milky Way will collide..." How can galactic collisions occur in an expanding...

No-dad dragons: Komodos reproduce without males.(This Week)
December 23, 2006... Two female Komodo dragons in zoos have startled their keepers by laying viable eggs without any contribution from males. The world's largest lizard species had previously been observed to reproduce only in the usual morn-and-pop way,...

Aging lessons: training gives elderly practical assistance.(This Week)
December 23, 2006... Sessions aimed at improving memory, reasoning, or visual concentration in healthy elderly people yield notable cognitive returns, even 5 years later, a long-term study suggests. The training largely protected the participants from age-related...

Not so silent: mutation alters protein but not its components.(This Week)
December 23, 2006... A single swap in the letters of a gene's sequence could modify the protein it encodes, even if the switch doesn't change which amino acids make up the molecule, researchers report. The finding could upset a central view in biology--that...

Craft reveals Martian site of ancient water.(This Week)(Brief article)
December 23, 2006... The distribution of materials in this composite image of the Nili Fossae region of Mars tells scientists that water resided there no more recently than nearly 4 billion years ago. Green indicates clay minerals that formed in a wet environment....

AIDS avoidance: more studies find that circumcision deters HIV.(This Week)
December 23, 2006... Two large clinical trials in East Africa show that being circumcised halves a man's risk of contracting HIV infection. The finding mirrors the results of a recent South African study (SN: 10/29/05, p. 275). Combined, the reports offer...

The big picture: Cassini spies Titan's tall mountains.(This Week)(Brief article)
December 23, 2006... A spacecraft has discovered the largest mountains known on Titan, Saturn's smog-shrouded moon. A combination of infrared detectors and penetrating radar on the Cassini spacecraft recorded images of the 1.5-kilometer-high structures, planetary...

Irony on high: global warming cools, thins upper atmosphere.(This Week)
December 23, 2006... Increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the air, which cause temperatures at Earth's surface to warm, will turn the upper layers of the atmosphere cooler and thinner in coming decades, new research suggests....

Ahead of the curve: novel morphing wing may reduce aircraft's fuel use.(This Week)
December 23, 2006... Airplane designers have long admired how birds reshape their wings for soaring, diving, and maneuvering. Now, a prototype aircraft wing has demonstrated in its first flight tests that its morphing might save fuel. In a series of...

What a flake: computers get the hang of ice-crystal growth.
December 23, 2006... With a camera-equipped microscope of his own making, Kenneth G. Libbrecht shoots some of the world's most stunning photographs of snowflakes. Since October, four of the physicist's images have adorned U.S. postage stamps. Each stamp displays an...

Crafty geometry: mathematicians are knitting and crocheting to visualize complex surfaces.
December 23, 2006... During the 2002 winter holidays, mathematician Hinke Osinga was relaxing with some lace crochet work when her partner and mathematical collaborator Bernd Krauskopfasked, "Why don't you crochet something useful?" Some crocheters might bridle at...