Science News articles from December 2008

Science News archives from December 2008

Quantum codes conceal secrets of the cosmos.(FROM THE EDITOR)
December 6, 2008... It seems like an innocent enough title for a scientific paper: "Closed timelike curves enable perfect state distinguish-ability." But perhaps the intent was clandestine. By a careful choice of words, the authors may have been sending an...

Scientific observations.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... "Tests have shown that, when a baby is lowered face down into warm water with a parental hand under his tummy, he shows no sign of panic but holds his breath automatically and floats happily in the water with his eyes fully open, gazing at the...

Science past: December 6, 1958.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... FIND CELL "POWER PLANTS"--Fragments of mitochondria, microscopic "islands" in the cell protoplasm surrounding the nucleus, are helping scientists find out how a cell gets its energy to carry on vital life processes. All energy comes from...

Science future.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)(Calendar)
December 6, 2008... January 3, 2009 The Year of Science kicks off with a launch event in Boston. Visit www.yearofscience2009.org January 28, 2009 The STFC holds a workshop in London on commercial applications of satellite data. Visit...

For daily use.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Turning down the thermostat on hot-water heaters may be good for the environment the electricity bill, but it may not be good for your health. The 140[degrees] Fahrenheit standard kills potentially lethal waterborne...

Science stats: worldwide water: supply and demand.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)(Statistical data)
December 6, 2008... Science Stats | WORLDWIDE WATER: SUPPLY AND DEMAND Water Resources EUROPE 6% NORTH AMERICA 15% ASIA PACIFIC 18% SOUTH ASIA 4% EAST ASIA 7% AFRICA 9% MIDDLE EAST 11% SOUTH AMERICA...

Genes & cells.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... Using preserved hair samples (shown), researchers have sequenced about 70 percent of the woolly mammoth's nuclear genome. The findings provide clues to when the last common ancestor of the ancient animal and today's elephants lived. Read more m...

Atom & cosmos.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has tasted its last morsel of the Red Planet's soil and viewed its last Martian landscape. With shorter days and an inopportune dust storm, the lander can't get the solar power it needs to function. Read more in...

Exoplanets make pictorial debut: first images of a planetary trio circling a star are released.(STORY ONE)(Cover story)
December 6, 2008... Canadian astronomer Christian Marois was already carrying a tightly held secret when he boarded an airplane in July to Hawaii's Manna Kea, the mountaintop home of both the Gemini North and Keck observatories. Images his team had taken with...

Food advice could be peanuts: early exposure seems to lessen the risk of nut allergy.(Body & Brain)
December 6, 2008... Consuming peanuts in infancy appears to lessen, not increase, a child's risk of developing a peanut allergy later, British researchers report in the November Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. The findings clash with some...

Opt for the tube, and do so quickly: heart patients may benefit from prompt catheterization.(Body & Brain)
December 6, 2008... NEW ORLEANS -- People who arrive at a hospital with chest pain or other mild heart attack symptoms, but ambiguous scores on medical tests, might still warrant emergency treatment, according to new research. The study, reported November 10...

Drug may slow viral heart infections: interferon reduced presence of viruses in biopsied tissues.(Body & Brain)
December 6, 2008... NEW ORLEANS -- A viral infection of the heart can be eliminated or at least slowed by treatment with the drug interferon, a team of European researchers reports. Viral infections show up in some patients with heart failure and may bear some...

As life evolves, minerals do too: team recounts dramatic changes in variety, abundance.(Earth)
December 6, 2008... If you think evolution is something that happens only to plants and animals, think again. Evolution--change through time--happens in the mineral kingdom as well, scientists say. As the solar system has aged, the number of types of minerals it...

It's a jungle on there: skin samples contain rich diversity of bacteria: inventory identifies body's most microbe-varied locales.(Genes & Cells)
December 6, 2008... PHILADELPHIA -- Most people think of rain forests as hot spots for biological diversity, but new research suggests that belly buttons are also rich ecosystems. That's one finding from the first attempt to take a large-scale inventory of...

Cancer genome sequenced.(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... For the first time, a complete cancer genome, and incidentally a complete female genome, has been decoded, scientists report online November 5 in Nature. In a study made possible by faster, cheaper and more sensitive DNA sequencing methods, the...

Different division.(meiosis between sexes)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... PHILADELPHIA -- Women and men sometimes do things differently, right down to divvying up their genetic legacies. This divvying up is known as meiosis, a process that cuts the number of chromosomes in half during the production of eggs and...

Household cleaners using oxygen may make blood removal too simple: three common forensic tests foiled by hemoglobin's fatigue.(Molecules)
December 6, 2008... CSI teams beware -- a common household product cleans up blood thoroughly enough to make it undetectable by three of the most common forensic tests. These "presumptive tests" are a quick-and-dirty way to identify important stains--such as...

Design criteria outline ways to repel water, oil: both liquids can bead up, flow off textured surfaces.(Molecules)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... A new set of design criteria could enable engineers to invent and manufacture surfaces that can repel almost all liquids, even oily fluids long noted for their ability to foul water-repellent surfaces. After designing and manufacturing...

Stone Age gal had wide hips: H. erectus females may have delivered big-brained babies.(Humans)
December 6, 2008... She was short, squat and definitely not built for speed. On the plus side, this adult female Homo erectus, who lived in Africa roughly 1 million years ago, had hips wide enough to bear babies with brains nearly as big as those of newborn human...

Ancient healer reborn.(Humans)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The graves of people who died 12,000 years ago rarely contain a woman's skeleton pinned down in an unusual position by large stones, accompanied by another person's foot (orange) and a menagerie of animal remains,...

Physicists find muons bemusing: puzzling results may signify mystery particle or new force.(Matter & Energy)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... Physicists are puzzling over a bunch of measly muons. In experiments at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., researchers have detected too many muons where there should be hardly any. Muons are heavy cousins of...

A way to crack quantum encryption: time-travel technique could break supposedly secure codes.(Matter & Energy)
December 6, 2008... Quantum physics offers James Bond and his ilk much more than a bit of solace--it permits quantum encryption, a completely spyproof way to send coded information. Any bad guy eavesdropping on Bond's messages to M could always be detected. ...

In their minds, volunteers swap bodies with woman, mannequin: illusion could help scientists study self-identity, body image.(Neuroscience)
December 6, 2008... It sounds like a lost episode of The Twilight Zone. A man enters a laboratory, dons a special headset and shakes hands with a woman sitting across from him. In a matter of seconds, he feels like he's inside the woman's skin, reaching out and...

Morality askew in psychopaths.(MEETING NOTES)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... Psychopaths show neural responses related to moral insensitivity and a keen interest in moral violations, scientists reported. Researchers led by Kent Kiehl of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque recruited inmates from a New Mexico...

Parasite twists rats' innate fear.(MEETING NOTES)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... In a dangerous game of cat and mouse, the most important player turns out to be a parasite. Researchers know that the parasite Toxoplasma gondii is a puppeteer that can force a rat to go against its instincts and become attracted to the scent...

Still love-struck after 20 years: some long-married couples are as giddy as teenagers.(Neuroscience)
December 6, 2008... New research on brain activity confirms that people can be madly in love with each other long after the honeymoon is over. Researchers led by Bianca Acevedo of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York wanted to know if romantic...

Anatomy of a well-aging brain.(MEETING NOTES)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... People who are mentally vigorous at age 80 can have more plaques in their brains than their normal-aging counterparts. At the same time, these higher-performing brains may host fewer tangles, which are denser, more harmful protein clumps,...

Melatonin by moonlight.(MEETING NOTES)(Brief article)
December 6, 2008... Moonlight may interrupt astronauts' sleep cycles by messing with their melatonin, researchers reported. Sleep cycles are regulated by the type and amount of light that people encounter. When a person goes to sleep, the hormone melatonin...

Sequencing the dead to save the living: reviving ancient genomes of long-extinct creatures offers a window into past extinctions--and may help prevent future die outs.
December 6, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Genes tell stories of disease, of health, of parentage, all recorded in the chemical composition of DNA. But to many biologists, one of the most exciting tales that sequences of DNA letters can tell is an...

No gene is an island: even as biologists catalog the discrete parts of life forms, an emerging picture reveals that life's functions arise from interconnectedness.
December 6, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The gene p53 has long been singled out as an anticancer hero. It is a critical tumor fighter. A person or lab animal develops a tumor much faster without the gene than with it. But p53 could be dangerous if left...

Thanks for the support.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
December 6, 2008... As a high school teacher, I have had many students who have heard about the global cooling scare of the 1970s, and these students hold on to those ideas even in the face of overwhelming evidence to suggest that the current warming trend is...

First thing first.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
December 6, 2008... I was intrigued by the ideas discussed in Bruce Bower's "Body in Mind" article (SN.. 10/25/08, p. 24) since I have long felt that there is an overemphasis on algorithms in efforts to create artificial intelligence. I remember arguing with one...

Waves pass through.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
December 6, 2008... Regarding "Solid evidence about Earth's core" (SN: 9/13/08, p. 14): If Earth has a solid inner core but a liquid outer core, then any direction you look at it, the shear waves have to go through some liquid outer core before they get to the...

Colliding planets.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
December 6, 2008... "Impact may have scarred Mars" (SN: 7/19/08,p. 10) interested me. In the article, Francis Nimmo of the University of California, Santa Cruz says that "something big smacked into Mars and stripped half the crust off the planet." I also...

California's Fading Wildflowers: Lost Legacy and Biological Invasions.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... California's Fading Wildflowers: Lost Legacy and Biological Invasions Richard A. Minnich [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "The land was very green and flower-strewn," Pedro Font notes in a 1776 diary entry describing fields near the Los...

Insatiable Curiosity: Innovation in a Fragile Future.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... Insatiable Curiosity: Innovation in a Fragile Future Helga Nowotny Translated by Mitch Cohen [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The only way is forward, so be bold, Nowotny tells those who fear the uncertainty of the future. Vice...

Coding and Redundancy: Man-Made and Animal-Evolved Signals.(BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... Coding and Redundancy: Man-Made and Animal-Evolved Signals Jack P. Hailman [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Traffic lights and primate vocalizations encode information in similar ways. Harvard Univ., 2008, 257 p., $39.95.

Prescriptions for the Mind: A Critical View of Contemporary Psychiatry.(BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... Prescriptions for the Mind: A Critical View of Contemporary Psychiatry Joel Paris [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] An assessment of the field and a look at the shift in emphasis from talk-based therapies to medication. Oxford Univ., 2008,...

The Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition and Science.(BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... The Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition and Science Sheilla Jones [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A personal and scientific story of the characters who struggled to create quantum physics. Oxford Univ., 2008, 323 p., $24.95.

Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the Digital Explosion.(BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the Digital Explosion Hal Abelson, Ken [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Ledeen and Harry Lewis Harvard course instructors explore the consequences of technology's spread....

Extreme Birds: The World's Most Extraordinary and Bizarre Birds.(BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 6, 2008... Extreme Birds: The World's Most Extraordinary and Bizarre Birds Dominic Couzens [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The superlatives of the feathered world, including "cleverest hunter" and "best drummer." Firefly, 2008, 287 p., $45.

The decider: informing the debate over the reality of 'free will' requires learning something about the lateral habenula.(ESSAY)
December 6, 2008... At the end of The Matrix trilogy, Neo and Agent Smith are engaged in one final, interminable scene of surreal combat, a surrogate competition for an eternal battle between humans and machines. "It's pointless to keep fighting," Agent Smith...

Debates over definition of planet continue and inspire.(COMMENT)
December 6, 2008... Planetary science is in the midst of a revolution. As recently as the early 1990s, "the planets" consisted of just nine famous objects in our solar system that every school kid learned to recognize by name and appearance. But then, advances in...

Successful science should inspire higher standards.(FROM THE EDITOR)
December 20, 2008... Science seldom works as well as it's supposed to. In principle, science should be the gold standard for acquiring reliable knowledge, using methods that eliminate prejudice and bias by conforming to universal standards of proper inference...

Scientific observations.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Freeman Dyson quotation)(Quotation)
December 20, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "When the first atom was split in 1932, the newspaper man asked Rutherford why he split atoms and Rutherford said, 'Oh, we're like children, we have to take the watch apart to see how it works.' And I think that is...

Science past: December 20, 1958.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
December 20, 2008... POISON IVY PILLS -- A poison ivy pill can offer season-long immunity against America's common summer skin rash.... The standard dosage that will develop immunity includes one tablet every other day for the first two weeks. This is then followed...

Science future.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Calendar)
December 20, 2008... December 30 Cleveland's Great Lakes Science Center rings in 2009 with exhibits, films and a balloon drop. Visit www.greatscience.com January 12, 2009 Smithsonian Institution's 2009 Tropical Extinction Symposium to be held in...

How bizarre.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
December 20, 2008... The University of Michigan's John Hart and his colleagues have shrunk Obama to the nanoscale. Using roughly150 million carbon nanotubes, the researchers recreated artist Shepard Fairey's poster in their own miniature tribute to the...

Matter & energy.(SN online: www.sicencenews.org)(magnetic resonance imaging)(Brief article)
December 20, 2008... MRI works by flipping the magnetic spin axes of atoms back and forth. Faster flipping is possible, which would make for clearer, speedier MRI and perhaps even give quantum computing an extra kick. Read more in "New theory defines faster MRI."...

Body & brain.(SN online: www.sicencenews.org)(Brief article)
December 20, 2008... That gut feeling--it creeps into your bones. A new study suggests that the amount of serotonin made naturally in the gut plays a crucial role in how light or dense bones are. Read more about it in "Bone density maybe determined in the gut."

Science stat.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Statistical table)
December 20, 2008... Science Stat Percent of U.S. patents granted to inventors in 2005 by state Total patents: 74,637 Top 5 California 24.10 Texas 7.05 New York 6.30 Michigan 4.51...

Honeybee CSI: why dead bodies can't be found: virus could explain one symptom of colony collapse.(STORY ONE)
December 20, 2008... There's bad news for diehards still arguing that honeybees are getting abducted by aliens. Beehives across North America continue to lose their workers for reasons not yet understood, a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder. But new...

Boys may show spatial supremacy within a few months after birth; studies suggest gender gap emerges earlier than expected.(Body & Brain)
December 20, 2008... The gender gap in spatial abilities emerges within the first few months of life, years earlier than previously thought, psychologists report. Males typically outperform females on spatial-ability tests by age 4, especially on tasks that...

Ginkgo biloba fails drug test; herb fares no better than placebo against dementia.(Body & Brain)(Brief article)
December 20, 2008... The supplement ginkgo biloba has failed to ward off Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia any better than a placebo in a long-term trial, researchers report in the Nov. 19 Journal of the American Medical Association. [ILLUSTRATION...

Sleep makes room for memories by keeping connections flexible; rest reduces synapse-forming molecules in the brain.(Body & Brain)
December 20, 2008... WASHINGTON -- Sleep not only refreshes the body, it may also push the reset button on the brain, helping the brain stay flexible and ready to learn, new research shows. Whether it is slow-wave sleep or rapid eye movement, called REM, sleep...

Treat HIV-positive babies early.(Brief article)
December 20, 2008... Babies infected with HIV from birth should be given powerful drugs to fight the virus as soon as possible, researchers find. In a comparison of treatment strategies, Avy Violari of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and colleagues...

Protein and Parkinson's.(Brief article)
December 20, 2008... Tossing out the old batteries of brain cells might keep those cells strong, new research suggests. Richard Youle of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues report online November 24 in the...

Depression hurts the heart.(Brief article)
December 20, 2008... The long-standing connection between depression and heart problems might be traceable to the fact that depressed people are less physically active than others. A greater tendency in depressed people to smoke and to fail to take medications...

Mars conceals buried icy treasure; frozen water reserves discovered in mid-latitude regions.(Atom & Cosmos)
December 20, 2008... There's ice in them thar hills! Using radar from an orbiting spacecraft to penetrate the hidden recesses of Mars, planetary prospectors have uncovered vast reserves of water-ice buried beneath rocky debris. The ice resides in hilly sections...

Clothes moths offer forensic clues by building fuzzy, hair-flecked cases; larvae pick up tresses from corpses to make their homes.(Life)
December 20, 2008... RENO, Nev. -- Clothes moths will eat more than our wardrobe. Given a chance, they'll eat us too. Casemaking clothes moth caterpillars can digest human hair and will feed on corpses. But it's not all bad news, scientists say. Hair bits...

Fish that travel together make wiser decisions; when they choose a leader, sticklebacks think as a group.(Life)(Brief article)
December 20, 2008... Trial juries, Wikipedia and even Top Chef rely on trust in consensus decision making. And in the stickleback fish world, things aren't so different. New research shows that bigger schools are more likely to make good choices, scientists report...

Standard model gets right answer; calculation of nucleon mass supports quark-gluon theory.(Matter & Energy)(Brief article)
December 20, 2008... When it comes to weighty matters, quarks and gluons rule the universe, a new study confirms. One of the largest computational efforts to calculate the masses of protons and neutrons shows that the standard model of particle physics...

Superconductivity does the twist; electron dance explains loss of resistance in exotic material.(Matter & Energy)
December 20, 2008... Sometimes a twist might be as good as a jiggle. Or at least, a new study suggests, twisting electrons appear to take the place of jiggling ions in an exotic kind of superconductor. It's the first experiment to show that a type of twisting...

Many drug trials never published; results are often biased, incomplete or unavailable.(Science & Society)
December 20, 2008... Patients asking their doctors if a new drug is right for them would do well to also ask for supporting evidence. Conclusions about drug safety and effectiveness in reports submitted to the FDA are sometimes changed in the medical literature to...

Antidepressants make for sad fish; drugs may affect feeding, swimming and mate-attracting.(Environment)
December 20, 2008... In the fish world, baby is just another word for lunch. So it behooves aquatic larvae to be ever vigilant. But those that as embryos or hatchlings encounter water polluted with trace concentrations of antidepressants are much more likely to...

Algae's feminine touch.(Meeting Notes)(Brief article)
December 20, 2008... Yoshifumi Hida and colleagues at the University of Shiga Prefecture in Japan report isolating "natural estrogens" produced by single-celled Chlorella algae in a freshwater pond. In lab tests, these primarily female sex hormones sped ovary...

Chicago's hot new PCB.(Meeting Notes)(polychlorinated biphenyls)(Brief article)
December 20, 2008... Decades after U.S. production of polychlorinated biphenyls ended, a van-mounted device sampling air pollution outside Chicago schools turned up PCB-11. Previously linked to yellow-paint production, this PCB had never been seen tainting air....

Pollution slows some sperm.(Meeting Notes)(Brief article)
December 20, 2008... Many marine species broadcast eggs and sperm into the water, hoping they meet and beget another generation. In this environment, "sperm are often the limiting factor," notes Ceri Lewis of the University of Exeter in England. Her data from two...

The hunt for habitable planets: here and now, a new suite of small telescopes are poised to look for Earthlike planets beyond the solar system.
December 20, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For years, planet hunters have been preoccupied with hot Jupiters--giant, gaseous planets that tightly hug their sun-like parent stars. These massive, close-in planets, not yet directly seen, are the easiest to find...

Physicists hot for ultra cold: a laser's light tickle tricks molecules into sitting still.(Cover story)
December 20, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Molecules are hot. They zip, spin and vibrate with frenetic motion. They jiggle and twist on the inside and bounce on the outside, imparting structure and physical properties to nearly everything that exists. But by...

Imagination medicine: brain imaging reveals the substance of placebos. Expectation alone triggers the same neural circuits and chemicals as real drugs.
December 20, 2008... Placebos are supposed to be nothing. They're sugar pills, shots of saline, fake creams; they're given to the comparison group in drug trials so doctors can see whether a new treatment is better than no treatment. But placebos aren't...

NASA's source.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
December 20, 2008... In "Cooling climate 'consensus' of 1970s never was" (SN: 10/25/08, p. 5), Science News includes a graph, attributed to NASA, that shows temperature deviations from the year 1880. The data clearly indicate a distinct warming trend throughout the...

How Thakur got its name.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
December 20, 2008... I read with interest the article "Other side of Mercury" (SN: 11/8/08, p. 8). In the article Ron Cowen mentions a crater named Thakur. This is a Bengali word, and I would appreciate if you can tell me some details about how this crater came to...

Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 20, 2008... Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine Gary Paul Nabhan [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Few people give thought to where the tomato, apple or walnuts in their salad came from. Or what grains gave rise to...

Bookshelf.(Stargazing Basics: Getting Started in Recreational Astronomy)(Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet)(Brief article)(Book review)
December 20, 2008... Stargazing Basics: Getting Started in Recreational Astronomy Paul E. Kinzer [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A beginner's guide to the equipment and knowledge needed to enjoy the nighttime sky. Cambridge Univ., 2008, 147 p., $19.99. ...

Edward O. Wilson: protect biodiversity hot spots and the rest will follow.(COMMENT)
December 20, 2008... Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University has written and lectured widely infields ranging from sociobiology and evolutionary psychology to conservation biology. He spoke recently on "sustainability" at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio....