Science News articles from February 2006

Science News archives from February 2006

Poor devils: critters' fights transmit cancer.(Tasmanian devils)
February 4, 2006... A fatal cancer afflicting Tasmanian devils passes from one of the small marsupials to another when they bite each other, rather than being transmitted via a virus, a new study suggests. The disease is the first cancer known to spread directly...

Self help: stem cells rescue lupus patients.(This Week)
February 4, 2006... By rebuilding a patient's immune system using his or her own stem cells, doctors can reverse the course of lupus in severely ill patients for whom medication no longer works, a new study shows. In this autoimmune disease, white blood cells...

Smashing success: accelerator gets cool upgrade.(particle accelerators )
February 4, 2006... A novel scheme for increasing the number of collisions in particle accelerators has boosted the performance of the world's highest-energy collider and promises to rev up others. This scheme, called high-energy electron cooling, helped the...

Good for something: prion protein maintains stem cells.(This Week)
February 4, 2006... The same protein that, in an altered shape, causes mad cow disease and other neurodegenerative disorders maintains the body's cache of blood-producing stem cells, a new study suggests. Called the prion protein, or PrP, it's scattered...

Cold and deep: Antarctica's Lake Vostok has two big neighbors.(This Week)
February 4, 2006... Trapped beneath Antarctica's kilometers-thick ice sheet are two bodies of water that rival North America's Great Lakes, new analyses suggest. The geological setting of these huge, unfrozen lakes hints that they may harbor ecosystems that have...

Protecting people from a terrifying toxin: vaccine stimulates immune response against ricin.(This Week)
February 4, 2006... In its first test in people, a vaccine against the toxin ricin appears safe and generates antibodies that are expected to be protective against the potential bioterrorism agent. Ricin comes from castor seeds and can cause lethal damage to...

Bird-safe Rx: alternative drug won't kill India's vultures.(This Week)
February 4, 2006... An international research team says that it has found a substitute for the livestock drug that has accidentally poisoned most of the vultures of India and neighboring countries. Last March, India announced that it intended to ban the...

Microbial moxie: bacteria-based fuel cells provide power.(Cover Story)
February 4, 2006... Anglers casting their lines last September into a Montana creek may not have noticed, but a diminutive power plant was churning away in a shallow spot by the shore. The device generated electricity--with the aid of river-dwelling bacteria--to...

A little less green? Studies challenge the benign image of pyrethroid insecticides.(Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry )
February 4, 2006... Rachel Carson turned the pest-control world upside down in 1962. In Silent Spring (Mariner), she documented how long-lived organochlorine pesticides, most notoriously DDT, were not only ridding croplands of insects, streets of mosquitoes, and...

Diabetes most often begins in March.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief Article)
February 4, 2006... A person's likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes varies seasonally and is about 50 percent higher in March than in August, according to a 6-year study. Led by Peter Doro, researchers at the University of Szeged in Hungary analyzed...

New candidates for smallest vertebrate.(ZOOLOGY)(Brief Article)
February 4, 2006... Two recent scientific papers have described fish species that could--depending on the definition--be the world's smallest vertebrate. A specimen of a mature female minnow, now named Paedocypris progenetica, from peat swamps in Sumatra...

Warming climate will slow ocean circulation.(OCEANOGRAPHY)(Brief Article)
February 4, 2006... Later this century, rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere will slow the ocean currents that bring warm waters to the North Atlantic, thereby affecting that region's climate, computer simulations suggest. When the...

Tumor's border cells told to leave.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief Article)
February 4, 2006... Cells on a tumor's outer layer that touch healthy tissue receive a chemical signal that sends them wandering away, according to new research. The finding could eventually lead to new ways to stop metastasis, the process by which cancers spread....

Rotavirus vaccines pass big safety tests.(INFECTIOUS DISEASES)(Brief Article)
February 4, 2006... The largest corporate-funded medical trials in history indicate that two new vaccines against rotavirus, a leading cause of childhood mortality worldwide, are both effective and safe. Rotavirus causes childhood diarrhea and is responsible...

Manganese can make water toxic.(ENVIRONMENT)(Brief Article)
February 4, 2006... Water contaminated with manganese not only tastes vile but also can limit the intellectual development of children drinking it, a new study finds. While studying the arsenic-tainted wells of Bangladesh several years ago, scientists turned...

2005 was warmest year on record.(CLIMATE)(Brief Article)
February 4, 2006... Last year's global average temperature of 14.6[degrees]C (58.3[degrees]F) was the warmest recorded since scientists began compiling records in the late 1800s. The previous record for global warmth was set in the E1 Nino year of 1998, when...

Galactic cannibalism.(ASTRONOMY)(Brief Article)
February 4, 2006... The Milky Way has been at it again. Astronomers have found evidence that our home galaxy is tearing apart and swallowing a nearby collection of stars--most likely the remains of a dwarf galaxy. The galactic violence would be the latest...

Cities of the World: A History in Maps.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... CITIES OF THE WORLD: A History in Maps PETER WHITFIELD With the birth of agriculture around 10,000 years ago, humankind formed settlements and abandoned its nomadic ways. These settlements became villages, then cities, and finally fonts of...

Don't Know Much About Mythology: Everything You Need to Know about the Greatest Stories In Human History but Never Learned.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT MYTHOLOGY: Everything You Need to Know about the Greatest Stories In Human History but Never Learned KENNETH C. DAVIS Before science, people used myths to explain the mysteries of life and nature, from the world's...

The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival among America's Great White Sharks.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... THE DEVIL'S TEETH: A True story of obsession and Survival among America's Great White Sharks SUSAN CASEY Thirty miles west of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge lie the Farallon Islands, with some of the most forbidding terrain in America....

Freaks of the Storm: From Flying Cows to Stealing Thunder. The World's Strangest True Weather Stories.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... FREAKS OF THE STORM: From Flying Cows to Stealing Thunder. The World's Strangest True Weather Stories RANDY CERVENY We've all heard the tales: The tornado that plucked the feathers from a coop full of chickens, or the wind that lifted a...

Beating The Blues: New Approaches to Overcoming Dysthymia and Chronic Mild Depression.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 4, 2006... BEATING THE BLUES: New Approaches to Overcoming Dysthymia and Chronic Mild Depression MICHAEL E. THASE AND SUSAN S. LANG Mild depression or, as it's clinically known, dysthymia affects up to 35 million people in the United States, but only...

Double trouble?(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... "Sleep apnea could signal greater danger" (SN: 11/26/05, p. 349) says that "twice as many... with sleep apnea had a stroke or died of that or another cause...." This sounds serious, but your readers can't correctly assign importance to "twice...

What a dino might be.(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... The picture caption in "Ancient Grazers: Find adds grass to dinosaur menu" (SN: 11/19/05, p. 323) states, "This phytolith, which was extracted from fossilized dinosaur dung unearthed in India, indicates that the reptiles dined on grasses: I do...

Buzz bomb.(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... The evidence at best is fuzzy for bee recognition of faces ("Face Time: Bees can tell apart human portraits," SN: 12/3/05, p. 360). Both sugar water and quinine have unique odors that are probably readily recognizable by bees. And what do the...

Wayward worms.(Letter to the Editor)
February 4, 2006... While it is extraordinary that an unprotected insect larva survives gut passage ("When Worms Fly: Insect larvae can survive bird guts" SN: 12/10/05, p. 373), it is not the first demonstration that insects may be carried inside of birds. The...

Ancestor of kings: early progenitor of T. rex had a crest.
February 11, 2006... Paleontologists have unearthed remains of the oldest known dinosaur of the tyrannosaur clan. About 160 million years ago, the agile, 3-meter-long predator roamed what is now northwestern China. Its fossils bolster a recent theory about the...

Beyond bar codes: tuning up plastic radio labels.
February 11, 2006... Electronic labels made from plastic semiconductors can now pick up and respond to radio signals at a frequency suitable for use on products. At an electronics conference in San Francisco this week, two European industrial-research teams...

Combat trauma from the past: data portray Civil War's mental, physical fallout.
February 11, 2006... Thanks to extensive military and medical records for Union Army veterans of the U.S. Civil War, a research team has determined that soldiers who saw many of their comrades killed or who were prisoners of war experienced a greater incidence of...

Males as nannies? First test for wasps' hidden baby-care skills.(This Week)
February 11, 2006... If scientists kidnap all adult females from a wasp nest, the young males--which normally just hang around without working--will pitch in and feed at least some of the larvae, researchers find. This shows that male wasps have the wherewithal to...

Low-fat diet falls short; it's not enough to stop cancers, heart disease.
February 11, 2006... Reducing fat consumption after menopause offers most women little if any protection against breast cancer or several other diseases, according to three reports from a massive prevention trial. No significant differences in rates of colorectal...

Found: a missing hot halo.(spiral galaxy halo of hot gas)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2006... X-ray observations of the massive spiral galaxy NGC 5746 reveal a spherical halo of hot gas (blue) extending 60,000 light-years on either side of the galaxy's visible disk (seen edge on as a large white streak). Because NGC 5746, which is 100...

Changing, priorities: Bush initiative shifts science-budget funds.
February 11, 2006... President Bush's proposed fiscal year 2007 budget would keep overall research-and-development (R&D) spending at current levels and shift funds to the three agencies critical to a White House initiative to maintain U.S. leadership in science and...

Blasts from the past: astronomers begin to go the distance with gamma-ray bursts.
February 11, 2006... Just before 10 p.m. EDT, last Sept. 3, Dan Reichart's cell phone started playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever." A fitting tune, since it was heralding a call from the heavens. Reichart's phone was signaling that a detector on NASA's Swift...

Self-serve brains: personal identity veers to the right hemisphere.(Cover Story)
February 11, 2006... The concept of identity theft assumes an entirely new meaning for people with brain injuries that rob them of their sense of self--the unspoken certainty that one exists as a person in a flesh-bounded body with a unique set of life experiences...

Hawk skin sends UV signal.(ultraviolet)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2006... The patch of skin above a hawk's beak just looks orange-yellow to us, but to another hawk, it may broadcast ultraviolet (UV) sex appeal. For the first time, researchers have shown that this bit of skin, called a cere, strongly reflects...

Newborn head size linked to cancer risk.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2006... Healthy babies born with larger-than-average heads may face an increased risk of childhood brain cancer, a study suggests. Head circumference reflects brain size, so a large head circumference may indicate abnormal growth in the brain....

Depression's rebirth in pregnant women.(BEHAVIOR)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2006... Although sometimes touted as natural mood enhancers, hormonal changes during pregnancy offer no biological protection against major depression for expectant mothers who temporarily stop taking their antidepressant drugs, a new study finds. ...

Prions' dirty little secret.(ENVIRONMENT)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2006... Fifteen years ago, scientists at the National Institutes of Health reported that malformed prions--proteins that can trigger lethal illnesses including mad cow disease--remain on soil surfaces for at least 3 years. Now, scientists report why...

Virus has the Midas touch.(M13 phage in cancer diagnosis)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2006... Researchers have recruited a stringlike virus to carry nanoscale loads of gold that could serve as imaging agents in cancer diagnosis. The team at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston used a virus called an M13 phage, which normally...

Finding a face place in monkeys' brains.(magnetic resonance imaging of money's brain)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2006... Monkeys recognize a wide variety of faces thanks to a brain area that specializes in face perception, according to a new study. A team led by Doris Y. Tsao of Harvard Medical School in Boston used functional magnetic resonance imaging...

Mouth cancer data faked, journal says.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2006... A study claiming to find that anti-inflammatory drugs including ibuprofen reduce the risk of mouth cancer in smokers was based on falsified data, according to the medical journal that punished the research. Jon Sudbo of the Norwegian...

Chimps creep closer yet.(chimpanzees are closely related to humans)(Brief Article)
February 11, 2006... Chimpanzees may be more closely related to humans than to any other primate, new genetic evidence suggests. "We all know that humans and chimps are extremely close genetically," says study coauthor Soojin Yi, an evolutionary biologist at...

The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 11, 2006... THE CREATING BRAIN: The Neuroscience of Genius NANCY C. ANDREASEN What do playwright Neil Simon, composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and mathematician Henri Poincare have in common? Each man is or was considered a creative genius, but...

25 Big Ideas: The Science That's Changing our World.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 11, 2006... 25 BIG IDEAS: The Science That's Changing Our World ROBERT MATTHEWS The author's mission in this book is to remind readers that scientists don't know everything. "Contrary to what some might believe," scientist-journalist Matthews...

A Measure of Everything: An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Measurement.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 11, 2006... A MEASURE OF EVERYTHING: An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Measurement CHRISTOPHER JOSEPH, ED. Since the dawn of humanity, someone has been measuring something for some reason. From gathering enough food for the tribe to...

Right, Wrong, and Risky: A Dictionary of Today's American English Usage.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 11, 2006... RIGHT, WRONG, AND RISKY: A Dictionary of Today's American English Usage MARK DAVIDSON Is the correct phrase en route or on route? Is everybody plural or singular? Does the phrase "head over heels in love" even make sense? Through...

The Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 11, 2006... THE BEDSIDE BOOK OF BIRDS: An Avian Miscellany GRAEME GIBSON Throughout history, birds have represented mythic beings, metaphors for human aspiration, omens, inspiration, and dinner. In this beautifully presented book, Gibson, an avid...

Preventive measure?(Letter to the Editor)
February 11, 2006... Regarding "Rare but Fatal Outcome: Four deaths may trace to abortion pill" (SN: 12/3/05, p. 358), would it be possible for an antibiotic to be included with the RU-486 package to prevent a Clostridium sordellii infection? Like millions of other...

Words unspoken.(Letter to the Editor)
February 11, 2006... The lack of the linguistic device "recursion" in the Piraha language might be more subtle than investigator Dan Everett suspects ("The Piraha Challenge," SN: 12/10/05, p. 376). I've heard examples of the sentence given as recursion--"When I...

In sickness and in death: spouses' ills imperil partners' survival.
February 18, 2006... Among elderly people, a spouse's hospitalization for certain ailments substantially raises his or her partner's likelihood of dying, according to the largest study ever to quantify such effects. The risk is especially great within the first...

Radio daze: staccato pulses suggest a new stellar class.
February 18, 2006... Astronomers say that they have discovered a new class of star that emits a burst of radio waves for 2 to 30 milliseconds before falling silent for minutes to hours. Each of the 11 newfound objects ranks among the strongest known sources of...

Killer flatworm: new species hunts with puffer fish toxin.
February 18, 2006... A newly discovered saltwater flatworm, pale yellow and about the size of a silver dollar, can take down mollusks in their shells, thanks to a powerful neurotoxin also found in puffer fish. Yet this formidable hunting tool flops as a defense...

Model for madness: engineered mice have schizophrenia-like symptoms.
February 18, 2006... Scientists have genetically altered mice so that they mimic the deficits in short-term memory and attention of schizophrenic patients. The new animal model could shed light on the causes and treatment of these symptoms, which respond only...

Not so sweet: cancers in rats that consumed aspartame.(sweetner aspartame)
February 18, 2006... A large, new test in rats suggests that the artificial sweetener aspartame may be a carcinogen. But scientists not affiliated with the research express doubts about the study's validity and point to earlier trials that produced the opposite...

New view: speedy microscope takes fuller look at the nanoworld.(This Week)
February 18, 2006... Although the atomic-force microscope is a workhorse for nanoscale measurements and manipulations, it's neither the fastest nor the most informative of instruments. Used widely in biological and materials research, as well as in microelectronics...

Looking ahead: tests might predict Alzheimer's risk.
February 18, 2006... In the century since German physician Alois Alzheimer first described the devastating brain disease that bears his name, the illness has resisted cure and its origins have remained elusive. Now, two teams of scientists report that years before...

Flora horror: hospitals struggle with a serious new gut microbe.
February 18, 2006... About 3 years ago, physicians in Quebec noticed an alarming pattern in patients with diarrhea. "All of a sudden, we were having patients so sick that they needed the ICU [intensive-care unit], says doctor and epidemiologist Sandra Dial. The...

Artificial animalcules: in the microscopic realm, machines learn to swim.(Cover story)
February 18, 2006... Some 300 years ago, microscope inventor Antony van Leeuwenhoek stunned the world when he became the first to observe "animalcules" that were "very prettily a-moving" in human saliva and other excretions. Now, a human-rigged device has joined...

Global warming may already be a killer.(Brief Article)
February 18, 2006... Earth's rising temperatures may be a precipitating factor in the extinctions of dozens of tropical frog species, according to new research. At least 110 species of harlequin frogs once lived in Central and South America, but two-thirds of...

Soil microbes are reservoir for antibiotic resistance.(Brief Article)
February 18, 2006... Bacteria that live in dirt are surprisingly resistant to antibiotics, even those drugs they presumably have never encountered before, according to new research. The majority of medical antibiotics originally came from soil bacteria, which...

SUVs no safer for kids than passenger cars.(sport utility vehicles)(Brief Article)
February 18, 2006... Children in sport utility vehicles (SUVs) are just as likely as children in passenger ears to be injured in an accident, despite the SUVs' greater weight, a study finds. Scientists analyzed accidents in 16 states and the District of...

Of taters and tots.(breast cancer induced by french fries)(Brief Article)
February 18, 2006... Diets rich in french fries may be toxic--at least to little girls, according to a new study. Researchers found that for each serving of french fries that a preschool girl typically consumed per week, her adult risk of developing breast cancer...

How to rate a snowstorm.(rating for snowstorms)(Brief Article)
February 18, 2006... For decades, meteorologists have rated weather phenomena such as tornadoes and hurricanes on a scale of 1 to 5, but they've never really had a good rating system for snowstorms. A new scale, unveiled on Jan. 30 at the annual meeting of the...

Stellar passage yields Charon's girth.(Pluto moon Charon observation)(Brief Article)
February 18, 2006... On July 10, 2005, astronomers watched as Pluto's moon Charon passed in front of a star. The event lasted less than a minute, but that was long enough for researchers operating telescopes in Chile and Brazil to use the star as a backlight to...

Krakatoa stifled sea level rise for decades.(Brief Article)
February 18, 2006... Ocean cooling caused by the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 kept sea level worldwide in check well into the 20th century, a new analysis suggests. When the Indonesian volcano exploded, it hurled immense amounts of ash and other...

Alzheimer's drug shows staying power.(Brief Article)
February 18, 2006... Since its U.S. approval in 2003, the drug memantine has been prescribed to slow mental decline in people with moderate-to-advanced Alzheimer's disease. But studies hadn't addressed the drug's long-term effectiveness. Researchers report in...

Diseases Of Trees And Shrubs: Second Edition.(book review)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 18, 2006... DISEASES OF TREES AND SHRUBS: Second Edition WAYNE A. SINCLAIR AND HOWARD H. LYON With more than 2,200 color images and 350 black-and-white photographs and drawings, this revised guide offers a comprehensive survey of the diseases of North...

Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago.(Book review)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 18, 2006... EXTINCTION: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago DOUGLAS H. ERWIN While most people are aware of the cataclysmic meteor impact that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, few know of the earlier, far...

The Dance of Molecules: How Nanotechnology is Changing Our Lives.(book review)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 18, 2006... THE DANCE OF MOLECULES: How Nanotechnology Is Changing Our Lives TED SARGENT Nanotechnology is all the rage among materials scientists today, but few laypersons are fully aware of Its potential, Sargent asserts. A professor of...

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.(Books: A selection of news and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 18, 2006... BREAKING THE SPELL: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon DANIEL C. DENNETT Religion and science can be considered mutually exclusive ways of viewing the world. But what would happen if the explicative power of science were applied to religion?...

The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth.(book review)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
February 18, 2006... THE WEATHER MAKERS: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth TIM FLANNERY About 8,000 years ago, Earth entered what some scientists call the Anthropocene era, the period in which people radically alter Earth's...

Pain, pain, go away.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 18, 2006... I'm pleased that images are now available to prove that self-control over pain works ("Brain Training Puts Big Hurt on Intense Pain: Volunteers learn to translate imaging data into neural-control tool," SN: 12/17/05, p. 390). Actually, I and...

Airing differences.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
February 18, 2006... "Changes in the Air: Variations in atmospheric oxygen have affected evolution in big ways" (SN: 12/17/05,p. 395) raises the question of how oxygen levels have changed over the past 2 centuries, when carbon dioxide has been increasing. JOHN...

Degrading a defense: bacteria use enzyme to escape trap.
February 25, 2006... Like a cloak of invisibility, an enzyme released by strep A bacteria lets them slip away from the body's staunchest defenders, a new study shows. The discovery, could lead to a new weapon against virulent diseases. White blood cells called...

Rome at risk: seismic shaking could be long and destructive.(earthquake at Rome)
February 25, 2006... If a large earthquake struck Rome, ground motions could rock the city for up to a minute, a new simulation suggests. Strong shaking for that surprisingly long interval would threaten many of the city's aging landmarks. Earthquakes that...

Big woman with a distant past: Stone Age gal embodies humanity's cold shifts.(fossil reports)
February 25, 2006... A 260,000-year-old partial skeleton excavated in northwestern China 22 years ago represents our largest known female ancestor, according to a new analysis of the individual's extensive remains. This ancient woman puts a modern twist on...

Birth deterrent: stress hormone cited in early miscarriages.
February 25, 2006... High concentrations of a stress hormone in newly pregnant women might make them more likely to have miscarriages, a new study finds. Roughly 30 to 50 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, says biologist Pablo A. Nepomnaschy of the...

Easy answers: quantum computer gives results without running.
February 25, 2006... Physicists have long known that quantum computers have the potential to race through calculations trillions of times as fast as ordinary computers do. Now, it seems that those machines may not have to calculate at all to deliver answers. ...

Busy little recyclers: chemical process, microbial metabolism transform trash-bound plastics.
February 25, 2006... A two-step approach that converts a common plastic into a biodegradable polymer could cut the number of packing peanuts and Styrofoam cups that end up in landfills, researchers suggest. In 2003, U.S. manufacturers produced more than 2...

Hunger for knowledge: appetite hormone may stimulate memory.
February 25, 2006... A hormone that's been tied to hunger may also play a pivotal role in creating and retrieving memories, according to a study in mice. These findings could spur new strategies for improving learning and memory in people. When the stomach is...

Eyeing a Saturn storm.(Cassini spacecraft observations)(Brief Article)
February 25, 2006... The Cassini spacecraft recently photographed the most powerful storm (white swirl) ever observed on Saturn. The tempest is located in Storm Alley, a region of the planet's southern hemisphere where strong disturbances have frequently occurred....

Evolution in action: the trials and tribulations of intelligent design.(laws for teaching evolution to students)
February 25, 2006... Irony of ironies, creationism has evolved. In a sense, it had to: In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that required the teaching of so-called creation science whenever a grade school or high school class covered the...

Buff and brainy: exercising the body can benefit the mind.
February 25, 2006... This is part one of a two-part series on lifestyle and brain fitness. Anyone who frequents the local gym has probably noticed a cyclical pattern to attendance. Workout kings and queens exercise religiously throughout the year, but as...