Science News articles from February 2005

Science News archives from February 2005

Disease detector: chemical test may spot Alzheimer's.(This Week)
February 5, 2005... Doctors could soon have a definitive diagnostic test for Alzheimer's disease, thanks to some tiny but sophisticated sensors. These nanoscale particles isolate extremely small quantities of protein clumps associated with the neurodegenerative...

Puny Parent? Planets may form around tiny orbs.(This Week)
February 5, 2005... Barely more massive than a planet itself, a failed star 500 light-years from Earth is nevertheless cloaked in a disk of gas and dust from which planets could coalesce. The finding highlights the possibility that planet formation may be even...

When Ebola looms: human outbreaks follow animal infections.(This Week)
February 5, 2005... Before two recent human outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in a region of Africa prone to epidemics of the disease, researchers identified the virus in wildanimal carcasses. Animal deaths could therefore signal a need for prevention efforts...

A Bug's Life: E. coli can't escape old age.(This Week)
February 5, 2005... Speaking about common characteristics of living things, the Nobel prize-winning biochemist Jacques Monod once said, "What is true for [the bacterium Escherichia] coli is true for the elephant." Now, research has highlighted a new similarity...

There's the rub: football abrasions can lead to nasty infections.(This Week)
February 5, 2005... The scrapes and cuts endured by football players on U.S. professional teams can develop into drag-resistant bacterial infections that may spread to teammates in the locker room or to opponents on the field, a new study shows. Athletes who play...

Petrified wood: quick and easy.(This Week)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2005... Materials scientists have turned wood into stone, mimicking in a single workweek a natural petrification process that takes millions of years. In the January Advanced Materials, Yongsoon Shin and his colleagues at the Pacific Northwest National...

Bad breath: insects zip air holes to cut oxygen risks.(This Week)
February 5, 2005... A need to avoid overdosing on that dangerous gas--oxygen--may be what drives some insects to shut down their breathing holes periodically. That's two researchers' proposal to explain why many ants, grasshoppers, moths, and some other...

Outsmarting the Electronic Gatekeeper: code breakers beat security scheme of car locks, gas pumps.(This Week)
February 5, 2005... A team of computer scientists has unraveled the codes of tiny radio devices that protect cars from theft and prevent fraudulent gasoline purchases. The exercise in reverse engineering by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore...

Cultivating revolutions: early farmers may have sown social upheavals from the Middle East to Europe.
February 5, 2005... Nearly 80 years ago, the British archaeologist V. Gordon Childe championed a theory of what he called a revolution in food production during the Neolithic age. Childe proposed that hunting-and-gathering groups in the Middle East had been the...

Dangerous practices: critics see flaws in drug-safety monitoring.
February 5, 2005... It was the best of statins, it was the worst of statins. The anticholesterol drug cerivastatin, sold under the brand name Baycol, was the most potent medicine in its class in the late 1990s. In 2001, however, it was ripped from the marketplace...

A drink a day might keep fuzzy thinking away.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2005... One alcoholic drink per day--beer, wine, or liquor--can stave off" mental decline at least a little bit, a study of elderly women suggests. Researchers conducted phone interviews with thousands of women between the ages of 70 and 81 who...

Hubble views bar in galaxy.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2005... The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a strikingly detailed image of the starlit arms, glowing gas, and dark dust clouds of a galaxy known as a barred spiral. Dubbed NGC 1300, the galaxy lies 69 million light-years from Earth. Unlike the...

A new test for Alzheimer's risk?(Behavior)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2005... Failures in visual short-term memory of objects, what scientists call "iconic memory," could reveal people at risk of Alzheimer's disease, a new study finds. Iconic memory is the image that lingers in the mind's eye after a person sees...

Hospitals motivated to skimp on infection control.(Mathematics)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2005... Hospitals fighting the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are engaged in a self-preserving struggle, not only against the bacteria but also quite possibly against each other. A new mathematical model suggests that in urban areas, the...

Ozone saps toads' immune systems.(Environment)(ozone exposure impairs the macrophages function)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2005... The ozone in smog can impair immunity in human lungs. A laboratory study now indicates that the pollutant can do the same in toads. Michael R. Dohm and his colleagues at the University of Hawaii at Hilo placed cane toads (Buff) marinus),...

Ice age hit Missouri 2.4 million years ago.(Earth Science)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2005... Analyses of soil from central Missouri have pinpointed just when North America's most recent spate of ice ages began: 2.4 million years ago. When the high-energy, extraterrestrial particles known as cosmic rays strike crystals of quartz,...

Detecting life on Mars.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2005... Despite ample evidence for liquid water on Mars, scientists remain unsure whether life ever resided there. Results from a 1976 Viking probe to the Red Planet failed to find any chemical sign of life, but many scientists argue that the probe...

Drugs lengthen worm's life span.(Biology)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2005... A class of antiseizure drugs slows aging and increases life span in the roundworm Coenorhabditis elegans, researchers have found. Because C. elegans has a naturally short life span--about 2 weeks, on average--scientists frequently use the...

Among Orangutan: Red Apes and the Rise of Human Culture.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 5, 2005... AMONG ORANGUTANS: Red Apes and the Rise of Human Culture CAREL VAN SCHAIK The orangutan is a reclusive breed that lives only in parts of Indonesia. Its propensity for roaming high in the treetops and favoring for areas inhospitable to...

Big Bang: the Origin of the Universe.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 5, 2005... BIG BANG: The Origin of the Universe SIMON SINGH Although the quest to figure out the universe is as old as humanity, we are "the first generation who can claim to have a respectable, rational, and coherent description" for it, reports...

Dictionary of Biology Eleventh Edition.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 5, 2005... DICTIONARY OF BIOLOGY Eleventh Edition M. THAIN AND M. HICKMAN, EDS. The revisions reflected in this volume aren't as extensive as those of the 10th edition, but they include what could be some of the most significant advances in biology...

Safe: the Race to Protect Ourselves in a Newly Dangerous World.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 5, 2005... SAFE: The Race to Protect Ourselves in a Newly Dangerous World MARTHA BAER, KATRINA HERON, OLIVER MORTON, AND EVAN RATLIFF The rapid pace of technological development over the past few decades has left many people confused about how things...

Not measuring up.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 5, 2005... I love Science News. Now and then, however, you write in terms that aren't understandable to the average reader. I refer in particular to "Snow Blow: Image of Mount Everest from orbit captures enormous plume" (SN: 12/4/04, p. 358). It states...

Out of stock.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 5, 2005... In your "DNA Bar Codes" (SN: 12/4/04, p. 360), it strikes me as strange to project the cost of collecting DNA samples from the "estimated 10 million animal species" on Earth when at least 90 percent of that probable fauna has yet to be...

Certainly uncertain.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 5, 2005... Wasn't Einstein so irritated at the thought of randomness in the universe that he said, "God does not play dice with the universe"? "Take a Chance: Scientists put randomness to work" (SN: 12/4/04,p. 362) seemed to suggest that Einstein endorsed...

Correction.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
February 5, 2005... "Food Colorings: Pigments make fruits and veggies extra healthful" (SN: 1/8/05, p. 27) shouldn't have categorized as flavonoids the plant pigments in the carotenoid family. And although frequently found in green vegetables, carotenoids don't...

Asian kids' IQ lift: reading system may boost Chinese scores.(This Week)(Chinese written language enhances intelligence)
February 12, 2005... Learning to read 2,500 pictorial symbols, as Chinese students do in grade school, yields a 5-point advantage on IQ tests, compared with the scores of Westerners whose languages are based on alphabets, according to a new analysis of mental...

Dial-a-splash: thin air quells liquid splatter.(This Week)(Air pressure effects on fluid drips)
February 12, 2005... In a classic image of high-speed photography, a drop of milk landing on a surface explodes into an ornate crown with beads of fluid leaping from its rim. Now, a study of other splashes finds that the air in which such bursts unfold is a...

Groovy bones: mammalian ear structure evolved more than once.(This Week)
February 12, 2005... Fossils of an ancient egg-laying mammal indicate that the configuration of the bones in all living mammals' ears arose at least twice along independent evolutionary pathways, paleontologists say. The tiniest mammalian bones--the middle...

Heartfelt fear: findings link stress and cardiac symptoms.(This Week)
February 12, 2005... Terrible sadness, a sudden fright, or other emotional stress can bring on heart attack symptoms in people not actually experiencing a heart attack, according to two new reports. The researchers examined people who showed up at hospitals...

Natural or synthetic? Test reveals origin of chemicals in blubber.(This Week)
February 12, 2005... Natural compounds akin to synthetic flame retardants wend their way up marine food chains and accumulate in whale blubber, researchers have found. It's the first time that scientists have used a new radiocarbondating method to determine whether...

Oops! Grab that trunk: high-diving ants swing back toward their tree. (Cephalotes atratus).(This Week)
February 12, 2005... Certain ants that live 30 or so meters up in tropical trees can save themselves in midair from ruinous falls by making moves previously known only in cheesy action films. Much as a movie heroine tumbles off cliffs but routinely manages to...

Lean times: proposed budget keeps science spending slim.(This Week)
February 12, 2005... President Bush's proposed fiscal year (FY) 2006 budget devotes $132 billion to research and development, approximately the same amount as the government plans to spend in FY 2005. Although administration spokespeople asserted that science...

Chemistry AU naturel: mimicking nature's clean and efficient ways.(DNA )
February 12, 2005... Over the past 3.5 billion years, cells have evolved into superlatively sophisticated chemical factories capable of churning out thousands of the most complex and capable molecules known. Whether it's translating DNA into proteins, responding to...

Life on the scales: simple mathematical relationships underpin much of biology and ecology.(lifespans)
February 12, 2005... A mouse lives just a few years, while an elephant can make it to age 70. In a sense, however, both animals fit in the same amount of life experience. In its brief life, a mouse squeezes in, on average, as many heartbeats and breaths as an...

NIH tightens its ethics rules.(Science & Society)(National Institutes of Health )(Brief Article)
February 12, 2005... Beginning in 2003, news stories charged that hundreds of National Institutes of Health scientists were engaged in ethically dubious practices, including consulting for or holding stock in companies whose products might benefit from NIH support....

Anxieties stoke bipolar unrest.(Behavior)(Insomnia and bipolar disorder)(Brief Article)
February 12, 2005... Insomnia and other sleep problems frequently afflict people with bipolar disorder, even when they're taking medications that quell their extreme emotional highs and lows, a new study suggests. Fear and anxiety that sleep loss will trigger bouts...

Proton storm erupts from the sun.(Astronomy)(Spitzer Space Telescope)(Brief Article)
February 12, 2005... Between Jan. 15 and 20, a single collection of sunspots erupted seven times. Four of these events event hurled into space powerful X-ray-emitting flares accompanied by billion-ton clouds of charged particles. The eruptions themselves weren't...

Illegal cigarettes pack toxic punch.(Agriculture)(Brief Article)
February 12, 2005... Tobacco plants excel at extracting heavy metals from contaminated soils. So, it's not surprising that tobacco grown in such dirt can deliver large doses of the toxic elements to smokers' lungs. The tobacco in some illegal cigarettes seems to...

Of X rays, viruses, and cooked meat.(Environment, National Toxicology Program)(Brief Article)
February 12, 2005... The psychology of risk is a tricky business. That's why the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) in College Park, Md., worries that many people might react with undue alarm to the Jan. 31 announcement by the government that the...

Putting a new spin on silicon.(Physics)(Hard disk drives)(Brief Article)
February 12, 2005... At the heart of data-reading heads in new computer hard drives are devices whose exquisite sensitivity derives from manipulations of a magnetic property of electrons called spin. Such devices, part of an ascendant technology known as...

Tiles stack for shell strength in abalone.(Materials Science)(Abalone shells' strength)(Brief Article)
February 12, 2005... Jewelers may prize abalone shells for their mother-of-pearl, but scientists have long been equally enchanted by the shell's strength. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have used a novel technique to uncover more of the...

Swift detection of a gamma-ray burst.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
February 12, 2005... For the first time, a telescope has directly detected X rays from a gamma-ray burst, the most powerful type of explosion in the universe. Gamma-ray bursts, which may be generated by the sudden collapse of extremely massive stars, also are the...

Long-winded benefits.(Environment)(Wind energy)(Brief Article)
February 12, 2005... The best wind-energy facilities can generate electricity at costs comparable to those of large coal- and nuclear-powered plants. However, compared with these old workhorse plants, wind-powered generators are less reliable because they depend...

A Cow's Life: the Surprising History of Cattle and How the Black Angus Came to Be Home on the Range.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 12, 2005... A COW'S LIFE: The Surprising History of Cattle and How the Black Angus Came to Be Home on the Range M.R. MONTGOMERY The cow is a relatively new creature. It didn't even exist just 10,000 years ago. It descended from fierce aurochs...

The Goddess and the Bull: Catalhoyuk: An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 12, 2005... THE GODDESS AND THE BULL: Catalhoyuk: An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization MICHAEL BALTER Catalhoyuk is an enormous prehistoric village in south-central Turkey, dating to 7,500 B.C. It was home to nearly 8,000 people...

The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the International Race to Split the Atom.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 12, 2005... THE FLY IN THE CATHEDRAL: HOW a Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the International Race to Split the Atom BRIAN CATHCART All matter is mostly empty space. Each of the multitude of atoms that makes up our universe has its mass...

Wild About Weather: 50 Wet, Windy and Wonderful Activities.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 12, 2005... WILD ABOUT WEATHER: 50 Wet, Windy and Wonderful Activities ED BROTAK The activities in this guide teach students about weather events such as snow and hurricanes, and about how the atmosphere operates. Brotak is a self-proclaimed...

Short end of the chromosome.(Letter to the Editor)
February 12, 2005... Since "women with chronically ill children generally reported more stress" and since "there was a very striking connection between stress and telomere length" ("Stressed to Death: Mental tension ages cells," SN: 12/4/04, p. 355), isn't it...

Pushing a fast one.(Letter to the Editor)
February 12, 2005... I was surprised to read in "Swift Lift: Birds may get a rise out of swirling air" (SN: 12/11/04, p. 373) the explanation, "Those low-pressure swirls create suction that pulls the insect upward." There is no physical force known as "suction."...

The people's choice.(Letter to the Editor)
February 12, 2005... Reading "Kibble for Thought: Dog diversity prompts new evolution theory" (SN: 12/18&25/04, p. 387), I puzzled over the statement that "domestication diverges from a standard model of evolution...." Darwin's primary evidence for The Origin of...

Hearing repaired: gene therapy restores guinea pigs' hearing.(This Week)
February 19, 2005... By flipping on a gene that's normally active only during embryonic development, researchers have restored hearing to a group of profoundly deaf guinea pigs. The finding may lead to treatments for millions of people with acquired hearing loss,...

Sky high: gamma-ray bursts are common in Earth's upper atmosphere.(This Week)
February 19, 2005... Enigmatic bursts of high-energy gamma rays produced in Earth's atmosphere are surprisingly strong and frequent, satellite data suggest. In the early 1990s, Earth-orbiting sensors originally designed to monitor sporadic flares of gamma rays...

In the buff: stone age tools may have derived luster from diamond.(This Week)
February 19, 2005... Ancient Chinese people may have used diamonds to polish their stone axes to mirror-like finishes, according to a new analysis. Other than pushing back by several thousand years the date for the first known use of diamonds, the findings also...

Spying Saturn's light show: anomalous aurora dazzles scientists.(This Week)
February 19, 2005... Among the solar system's auroras, the dancing lights that paint Saturn's skies show a distinct style. Three reports in the Feb. 17 Nature describe a choreographed experiment conducted 13 months ago, in which the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space...

Math minus grammar: number skills survive language losses.(This Week)(Effects of brain damage)
February 19, 2005... Three British men who suffered left brain damage that undermined their capacity to speak and understand language still possess a firm grasp of mathematics, a new study finds. This observation dramatically illustrates the presence of separate...

Hour of babble: young birds sing badly in the morning.(This Week)
February 19, 2005... Zebra finch youngsters learning to mimic adult songs lose ground but then recover whenever they sleep, according to an extensive study of recordings. After being awake several hours, the young males regain their mastery of the material and then...

Healing gone haywire: wound-repair genes signal cancer spread.(This Week)
February 19, 2005... Aggressive tumors have a lot in common with wounded tissues--both show rapid cell division and the growth of new blood vessels. Those similarities inspired a new test to predict which breast tumors will spread rapidly if untreated and which are...

Against the migraine: a procedure's serendipitous success hints that some headaches start in the heart.
February 19, 2005... Neurologist Roman Sztajzel received an unexpected letter in 1999 from a patient he had last seen a year and a half earlier. The Swiss woman thanked him for curing her of migraines, which she had experienced frequently into her early 30s. But...

Images from the edge: new views of star birth and baby galaxies.
February 19, 2005... David Schiminovich stared at a gallery of spiral galaxies as though he had never seen anything like them before. Indeed, no one had. He sat downloading the newly collected images in a narrow room overlooking a cavernous space at the California...

Meteorite on Mars.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2005... Opportunity, one of the twin rovers on Mars, has discovered the first meteorite on a planet other than Earth. Initial observations, taken from a distance with the rover's thermal-emission spectrometer, indicated that the pitted, basketball-size...

Subway air does extra damage.(Environment)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2005... The hodgepodge of minute compounds that drifts through the air in many environments has been linked to heart and respiratory problems. But mixtures vary in composition from place to place, and it's not known which ones are most harmful. ...

Molecular surgery traps hydrogen inside carbon cage.(Chemistry)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2005... In a feat of precision chemistry, scientists have locked a single hydrogen molecule inside a soccer ball-shaped carbon molecule known as a buckyball, and they have used the technique to make large quantities of the tiny containers. ...

High costs of CT screening.(Science & Society)(whole-body computed tomography)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2005... Whole-body computed tomography (CT) screening has become popular despite the typical $1,000 price tag for the comprehensive X-ray scan. There can also be a hidden cost for each scan, of between $1,100 and $3,500, borne by the U.S. health care...

Lefties, righties take neural sides in perceiving parts.(Neuroscience)(brain differences in handedness)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2005... Scientists have uncovered a new brain difference between right-handers and lefthanders. For righties, a region near the back of the left brain fosters the capacity to focus on distinguishable parts of an object rather than on the whole entity,...

Vampire spit gives strokes a licking.(Biomedicine)(Vampire bat saliva can aid stroke treatment)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2005... An experimental drug derived from the saliva of vampire bats can clear away blood clots in the brains of stroke patients and restore blood flow to brain areas starved of circulation. The findings come from a small number of people but have...

High salt intake hikes stroke risk.(Nutrition)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2005... People who consume a lot of salt are nearly twice as likely to experience a clot-based stroke as are people who consume a modest amount--even when their blood pres sure readings are comparable, a study of New York City residents shows. ...

Stroke patients show dearth of vitamin D.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2005... Having a stroke puts elderly people at an increased risk of breaking a hip. Scientists have assumed that a major reason is that an impaired sense of balance from a stroke leads to more falls. They've also observed a loss of bone density in the...

Southern blacks face excess risk of stroke.(Epidemiology)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2005... Scientists have known for decades that blacks in the United States are at greater risk of stroke than whites are. Studies have also suggested that southerners of any race or ethnicity have more strokes than northerners do. A new...

Frozen Oceans: the Floating World of Pack Ice.(Books)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 19, 2005... FROZEN OCEANS: The Floating World of Pack Ice DAVID N. THOMAS Frozen seawater, or pack ice, covers 13 percent of Earth's surface, an area comparable to that of the planet's deserts. Because most pack ice is in desolate and frigid places,...

The Search for Nefertiti: the True Story of an Amazing Discovery.(Books)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 19, 2005... THE SEARCH FOR NEFERTITI: The True Story of an Amazing Discovery JOANN FLETCHER In 1912, archaeologists discovered a sculpted bust of the ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti, but there was no evidence of her grave or remains. The intrigue...

Happiness: Lessons from a New Science.(Books)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 19, 2005... HAPPINESS: Lessons from a New Science RICHARD LAYARD In Western countries, median incomes have doubled in the past 50 years, but Layard, a London economist, claims that people aren't any happier for it. The author explores wealth and many...

A World Without Time: the Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein.(Books)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 19, 2005... A WORLD WITHOUT TIME: The Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein PALLE YOURGRAU Mathematician Kurt Godel is widely regarded for his 1931 incompleteness theorem, which found that not everything can be proved. Godel then turned his attention...

Negative thinking.(Letter to the Editor)
February 19, 2005... The article "Sweet Glow: Nanotube sensor brightens path to glucose detection" (SN: 1/1/05, p. 3) mentions "ferricyanide, an electron-hungry molecule." This puzzled me no end. Aren't ferricyanide molecules, unlike their ions, electrically...

Meltdown.(Letter to the Editor)
February 19, 2005... "Alpine glaciers on a hasty retreat" (SN: 1/1/05, p. 13) reports that between 1973 and 1999, "the total area covered by almost 940 Swiss glaciers fell by 18 percent, an average rate of 1.3 percent per year." An 18 percent loss over 26 years...

Alien notion.(Letter to the Editor)
February 19, 2005... I wonder if the upsurge in alien, invasive species in real estate boom areas ("Plants: Importance of being economic," SN: 1/8/05, p. 30) is, at least in part, because of careless gardening. Many people introduce non-native plants into their...

Legends in their own words.(Letter to the Editor)
February 19, 2005... In light of the findings reported in "Temples of Boom: Ancient Hawaiians took fast road to statehood" (SN: 1/8/05, p. 20), it seems obvious that there's a need for anthropologists to revisit the records of local "legends" as they study human...

Ghostly galaxy: massive, dark cloud intrigues scientists.(This Week)
February 26, 2005... It looks like an empty patch of space, but astronomers say it holds a galaxy that contains no stars. If Robert Minchin of Cardiff University in Wales and his colleagues are right, they have found the first member of a population of galaxies...

The old crowd: minke whales have long thrived in Antarctic seas.(This Week)(minke whales should not be culled)
February 26, 2005... New genetic studies of whale meat from Tokyo grocery stores appear to strengthen the case for protecting Antarctica's minke whales against renewed hunting. The DNA from minke samples shows such genetic diversity that the Antarctic...

Big flash: record-breaking explosion in outer space.(This Week)(Magnetars)
February 26, 2005... Astronomers report the brightest flash of light ever recorded from beyond the solar system. In just 0.2 second on Dec. 27, 2004, spacecraft detected a stellar outburst that radiated as much energy as the sun emits in 250,000 years. But...

Shrinking at sea: harvesting drives evolution toward smaller fishes.(This Week)
February 26, 2005... Fish are becoming smaller and growing more slowly in response to pressures introduced by fishing, scientists say. That shift, which new data suggest is hard to undo, creates populations offish that are poor at reproducing and inefficient at...

Electronic soup: molecules in acid broth act as circuit parts.(This Week)
February 26, 2005... Single molecules may someday replace the transistors and other already tiny components in today's microchips. Yet many of the molecules that chemists have found to have promising electronic traits don't behave as expected in circuits. Now,...

To stanch the flow: hemophilia drug curbs brain hemorrhage.(This Week)
February 26, 2005... There's no effective emergency treatment for a cerebral hemorrhage. Roughly 60 percent of people who experience this so-called bleeding stroke die within a year. A new international study, however, indicates that a drug that speeds blood...

Return of the wetlands? Restoration possible for some Iraqi marshes.(This Week)
February 26, 2005... Field studies in Iraq conducted during the past year suggest that some of the region's ecologically devastated marshes could be restored, scientists reported at a meeting on Feb. 20. As recently as the 1980s, a Connecticut-size swath of...