Science News articles from January 2002

Science News archives from January 2002

Alzheimer's alert. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
January 5, 2002... I enjoyed your timely article "Attacking Alzheimer's" (SN: 11/3/01, p. 286). Conspicuously absent, however, was any mention of the possibility that the disease is a vascular disorder with neurodegenerative consequences, rather than the other...

Maybe just dim. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
January 5, 2002... Thank you for your update of the antics of those madcap scientists who continue to very creatively search for "dark matter" ("A cosmic crisis?" SN: 10/13/01, p. 234). Their frantic quest seems more and more like a comedy of the absurd. ...

Web gem. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
January 5, 2002... I just wanted to express my thanks to you for providing full access to the Web site for subscribers to SCIENCE NEWS magazine. Many other publications do not do this, and it is very refreshing to find it here. Keep up the great work and service....

Virus shapes risk of multiple sclerosis. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... A massive, decade-long medical study has removed some lingering doubts that the neurological disease multiple sclerosis (MS) is linked to a common viral infection. For years, research findings have pointed toward the connection, but whether the...

Magnetic refrigerator gets down and homey. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... Household fridges and magnets have long had a surface relationship. Now, they may be warming up--actually, cooling off--to a more intimate involvement. Researchers have unveiled a new cooling system that chills by means of magnets, operates at...

Galaxy survey sheds light on dark matter. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... By looking at some of the brightest objects in the universe, astronomers are learning new details about its darkest stuff. Known as dark matter because it emits no light, this substance accounts for at least 90 percent of the mass of the...

Vaccine prevents urinary-tract infections. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... Infections of the urinary tract that plague many young women may someday be avoidable, researchers report. An experimental vaccine designed to repel 10 common bacteria that cause these problems, also known as bladder infections, has cleared a...

It's bottoms up for iron at sea's surface. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... Biological activity at the base of the food chain in many regions of the ocean is limited by the availability of dissolved iron. The algae that convert sunlight into food in the sea's top 100 meters or so can't fully use the other nutrients...

Mistletoe, of all things, helps juniper trees. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... Often dismissed as the parasitic kiss of death, mistletoes turn out to form complex relationships with their trees, sometimes fostering new life. A spiky mistletoe species on juniper trees attracts birds that spread the trees' seeds, says...

For some heart patients, days are numbered.(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... The number 4 evokes dread among many Chinese and Japanese people. The reason: In the Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese tongues, the words for "four" and "death" are pronounced almost identically. An analysis of U.S. mortality statistics...

Watching a dying star transform. (Astronomy).(planetary nebula)(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... Just before dying, sunlike stars blossom into beauties. They set aglow cocoons of gas that they've previously hurled into space. These shimmering gas bubbles, which come in a rainbow of colors, take on intriguing shapes including teardrops,...

Sampling the sun. (Astronomy).(space probe Genesis samples solar wind)(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... Late in November, NASA's Genesis spacecraft opened its collector arrays and began gathering samples of the solar wind, the breeze of ions that flows from the sun's outer layers. Positioned at the point where Earth's gravity balances that of the...

Prenatal folate averts child leukemia. (Astronomy).(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... Because a deficiency of folic acid, or folate, can lead to birth defects, pregnant women are encouraged to consume foods rich in the substance or to take supplements. There's another reason for expectant mothers to pay attention to folate: Even...

A glass of red may keep arteries loose. (Astronomy).(polyphenols in wine good for heart)(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... Wine dissolves behavioral inhibitions, but a biochemical inhibition may underlie some of red wine's benefits to the heart. Moderate intake of alcoholic beverages reduces a person's risk of heart disease. Some studies have suggested that red...

Garlic interferes with HIV drug.(protease inhibitor affected negatively by garlic)(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... Garlic has mythological as well as real protective properties, but it also has a newly discovered downside. Garlic supplements interact negatively with an HIV drug, according to Stephen C. Piscitelli of the biotech firm Virco Lab in Rockville,...

Hormones: here's the beef: environmental concerns reemerge over steroids given to livestock.(animal excretions release synthetic hormones into environment)(Statistical Data Included)
January 5, 2002... Each year, U.S. farmers raise some 36 million beef cattle. Farmers fatten up two-thirds of these animals by using hormones. Many cattle are fed the same muscle-building androgens--usually testosterone surrogates--that some athletes consume....

Getting out the thorn: biomaterials become friendlier to the body.(biomedical materials)
January 5, 2002... The practice of replacing injured or worn-out body parts with something other than flesh and blood goes back centuries. But not until recently have doctors been inserting completely humanmade materials into their patients, and today, it's...

Turbulence leads to early rain of ash. (Earth Science: from San Francisco, at the 2001 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union).(volcanic ash)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
January 5, 2002... A new aerodynamic analysis suggests that small particles of ash in a turbulent volcanic plume can fall nearer their source than researchers had thought. On Aug. 18, 1992, Mount Spurr--a 3,374-meter-tall volcano about 125 kilometers west of...

Toxic metals taint ancient dust. (Earth Science: from San Francisco, at the 2001 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union).(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... A new study of dust lofted to Antarctica suggests that significant amounts of trace metals coated dust grains long before industries began loading the atmosphere with such pollutants. Blowing dust in the American Southwest often carries...

Southeastern Alaska is on the rebound. (Earth Science: from San Francisco, at the 2001 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union).(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... Scientists using the Global Positioning System (GPS) to track ground movement along faults in southeastern Alaska have measured something entirely different--the rapid rise of parts of the region resulting from the recent melting of glaciers....

Global warming to boost cotton yields. (Earth Science: from San Francisco, at the 2001 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union).(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... There may be one small consolation for global warming: There'll be a good supply of breathable fabrics. Scientists predict that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in the year 2060 will be twice that measured before the...

Bolts from the blue can have long reach.(distance of effects from lightning)(Brief Article)
January 5, 2002... Current U.S. Air Force operating procedures recommend that ground crews for aircraft and other personnel stop working outdoors when lightning is spotted within 5 nautical miles (nmi). However, a new analysis by the service suggests that that...

Not so appetizing. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
January 12, 2002... For a few unfortunate people, choline has a dark side ("Brain food," SN: 11/3/01, p. 282). An inborn error of metabolism, trimethylaminurea, causes them to smell like rotting fish when they eat high-choline foods. Sara D. Brown Clinton,...

Ancient gene takes grooming in hand. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... All sorts of animals groom themselves regularly, which keeps them clean and healthy. However, mice with an alteration in one of the genes that orchestrate body development lose their grip on grooming, a new study finds. These mice bite and...

Record science budget evaded proposed cuts. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Last April, the Bush administration requested that Congress scale back funding for most nonmilitary science. The plan would have slashed the Department of Energy's research into renewable energy sources and eliminated some research programs at...

Milky Way galaxy: cloaked in a hot shroud? (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Spacecraft observations indicate that a vast, unseen halo of hot gas envelops our home galaxy. Large enough that it literally could be brushing up against the Milky Way's nearest galactic neighbors, the halo may be the remnants of the...

Genes make potential target in lymph cancer. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Treatment of the lymph node cancer called diffuse large B-cell lymphoma is all-or-nothing. Chemotherapy cures about 40 percent of patients, but the others eventually die from this cancer. Because of that split, scientists deduce that the cancer...

Hanging around mom's web helps everybody. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... For nearly grown spiderlings, lingering in their mother's web instead of setting off on their own turns out to be a boon for the mom, as well as themselves. "This was fairly surprising," says Thomas C. Jones of University of Tennessee in...

Earth's inner core could include silicon. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Laboratory experiments investigating the crystal structure of iron-silicon alloys at hellish temperatures and pressures may yield new insights into the mineral composition of Earth's solid, inner core, scientists say. Iron is by far the...

New structure reveals catalysts' details. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Two centuries after Englishman William Hyde Wollaston first isolated the element palladium, researchers have now uncovered fundamental new information about the material. Palladium--a soft, gray-white metal that resembles platinum--is a...

Viruses stop antibiotic-resistant bacteria. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Nearly a century ago, biologists discovered viruses that prey upon bacteria. When penicillin and other antibiotics emerged a few decades later, however, physicians largely abandoned their efforts to use these bacteriophages, or phages, to...

Biological dark matter: newfound RNA suggests a hidden complexity inside cells.(beginning the research into noncoding RNAs)
January 12, 2002... It started with worms that just would not grow up. In the early 1990s, Victor Ambros and his colleagues were conducting a gene hunt. In particular, they were searching for the gene that was mutated in a perplexing strain of Caenorhabditis...

Tadpole science gets its legs ... and reveals complex lives for the swimming squiggles.
January 12, 2002... The wonder of tadpoles morphing into frogs or toads has always provided preschoolers with an enticing entree into the world of science. But the little critters aren't just for kids. An everwidening pool of adult scientists is turning to...

Ominous drug-resistance hints appear. (Biomedicine).(growing antibiotic reistance in the Haemophilus influenzae bacterium)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Haemophilus influenzae, a bacterium that's a common cause of pneumonia and meningitis, has developed signs that it may be on a path toward resistance to an important line of antibiotics, scientists report. The drugs, called...

Suppressive drug therapy hinders herpes. (Biomedicine).(daily usage of valacyclovir)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... A daily regimen of the antiviral drug valacyclovir controls genital herpes vastly better than does the same medication when used only to treat outbreaks of the disease, according to a new study. To compare the effectiveness of the two...

Will new approach cure Chagas disease? (Biomedicine).(destruction of an enzyme may make Trypanosoma cruzi unable to transmit Chagas disease)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... By disabling the parasite that causes Chagas disease, a simple drug might offer a way to stop this deadly condition that affects 18 million people in Latin America. Chagas disease, which can damage the heart, results from infection by a...

Rwandan patients show unusual HIV. (Biomedicine).(gene mutation related to human immunodeficiency virus detected in Rwanda)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Routine testing of people in Rwanda who have had human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) for many years without getting AIDS indicates that many are infected with a virus harboring a rare mutation. Researchers tested the blood of 16 people who...

Satellites could help track sea level. (Earth Science).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Measurements of satellite signals bouncing off a calm mountain lake may pave the way for a fleet of spaceborne sensors or groups of seaside towers that can quickly and inexpensively monitor local or global changes in sea level. Central...

Finding fault for an old earthquake. (Earth Science).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Scientists in Southern California believe they've found evidence that finally identifies the source of one of the largest quakes since the region was settled. The clues also permit the researchers to better estimate the magnitude of the 1812...

Liquid computer takes key quantum step. (Physics).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... In the early 1990s, even the scientists who were in the initial stages of applying quantum mechanics to computing doubted that anyone could ever do useful calculations with their techniques. Those attitudes changed dramatically in 1994, when...

Electrons grab unexpected energy share. (Physics).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Iron rusts. Silver tarnishes. Such low-energy transformations of metals are among the most obvious and ubiquitous examples of surface chemistry. Yet currently, "no one can predict what [chemical] reactions will occur on a pure metal surface,"...

Editor's letter.
January 19, 2002... We have a pleasing surprise in store for you next week. It's a new look for SCIENCE NEWS. While we will continue to provide stories that are timely, concise, accurate, and engaging, our appearance will be easier on the eyes and give you...

Gene variant tied to human aging. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... Named for a figure in Greek mythology, the gene called klotho has stirred controversy since 1997, when a mouse study hinted that it has a role in aging. Now, an analysis of three human populations reveals that a certain pattern of klotho...

Detonating silicon wafers can ID elements. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... In a serendipitous discovery, chemists have found a convenient way to make silicon--the stuff of computer chips--explode on command. Wafers of specially processed silicon might someday serve in miniature propulsion systems, ignition systems...

Some gamma-ray bursts may occur nearby. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... Gamma-ray bursts, the flashes of high-energy light produced by the most powerful explosions in the cosmos, originate in galaxies billions of light-years from Earth. That's been the assumption since the late 1990s, when astronomers began...

Much psychosis in elderly may go unnoticed. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... If you get to be 85 or older, you automatically become a member of the population group known as "the very old." New data reveal that psychotic symptoms among these seniors have been greatly underestimated, a finding with potential public...

Mammal cells make fake spider silk better. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... The tough silk spun by spiders with the greatest of ease has long inspired human imitators. In a process not yet fully understood, spiders transform dissolved proteins in their silk-making glands directly into thin, rugged filaments of various...

Nicotine metabolism shows ethnic bias. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... A comparison of Latino, white, and Chinese-American smokers suggests that people of East Asian descent are apt to clear nicotine from their blood more gradually than the other smokers do, thereby staving off a craving for the next cigarette....

Official chooses Nevada for nuclear waste. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has notified Nevada officials that he favors tunnels beneath Yucca Mountain in the southwestern part of the state as the nation's long-term depository for highly radioactive nuclear waste. The secretary's...

Toxic Pfiesteria inhabit foreign waters. (Science News of the week).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... The notorious Pfiesteria microbes, implicated in gory fish kills and human illness along the mid-Atlantic U.S. coast, have turned up in Norway. No one reported a fish kill at the estuary of the Sandvikselva River, but it does contain the...

The gene that came to stay. (Anthropology).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... A gene thought by some scientists to foster a bold, novelty-seeking personality, as well as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), apparently spread substantially in human populations over roughly the past 40,000 years, according to a...

Stone Age signs of complexity. (Anthropology).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... A pair of 77,000-year-old pieces of engraved ochre found in a South African cave lend credence to the view that symbolic forms of thinking, considered crucial for modern human behavior, emerged surprisingly early in the Stone Age. An...

Parrots will fluoresce for sex. (Biology).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... A budgerigar's head literally glows for its mate, and both males and females of this parrot species prefer to court radiant partners. Only birds in the parrot family have feathers that fluoresce, explains Kathryn E. Arnold of the...

Female pipefish face toughest odds. (Biology).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... In the world of pipefish, which are cousins of sea horses, sexual selection may reverse in the most dramatic way yet recorded. Biologists have most often talked about sexual selection as a force driving males to evolve lures for females....

Exploring the Red Planet: Mars Odyssey set to begin its mission.
January 19, 2002... Last week, flight controllers at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., breathed a collective sigh of relief. Although in 1999 they had lost the last two spacecraft that journeyed to Mars, their current mission to the Red Planet...

Flattery for faience: imitating ancient materials reveals lost manufacturing secrets. (Cover Story).
January 19, 2002... While students swarmed the halls at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology one Friday late last November, a dozen or so outsiders crowded into a small glass shop in the basement of Building 4. They were recapitulating the first steps of an...

Cancer fighter reveals a dark side. (Biomedicine).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... Too much of a good thing can be bad, even when it comes to a tumor-suppressing gene. Researchers report that mice with an overactive gene for a protein called p53, which checks inappropriate cell division and helps prevent cancer, prematurely...

Cloning's ups and downs. (Biomedicine).(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... There's been good news and bad news about cloning of late. On the worrisome side, one of the creators of Dolly, the world's first cloned mammal, report that the nearly 6-year-old sheep has developed arthritis in her left hip and knees. That's...

A blast from the past.(two books about ancient civilizations and monuments)
January 19, 2002... King Arthur and the Holy Grail, the lost tomb of Alexander the Great, and the story of Atlantis: the human past is full of unsolved mysteries. The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Ancient Worm draws on modern science and the latest research to...

Cancer clue: RNA-destroying enzyme may thwart prostate-tumor growth. (Science News This Week).(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... The size and shape of a walnut, the prostate gland is the source of the fluid that carries a man's sperm. It's also a source of great concern to many men: In 2001, physicians in the United States diagnosed nearly 200,000 cases of prostate...

Making silicon naturally: chemists glimpse organic substance in plankton. (Science News This Week).(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... For the first time, signs of a compound composed of both carbon and silicon have been found within a living organism. Besides its biological novelty, the find could open new routes for making silicon-based materials, according to researchers...

Forbidden tests: panel seeks ban on human clones. (Science News This Week).(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... A national advisory panel has asked Congress to forbid cloning aimed at creating a child but urged the lawmakers to permit other medical experiments with cloned human cells. Specifically, the Jan. 18 recommendation calls for a "legally...

Little levers for satellites: cilia may precisely dock tiny spacecraft. (Science News This Week).(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... In an era of satellite design now in its infancy, large and costly spacecraft are giving way to fleets of cheaper, miniaturized satellites. Some may be as small as a deck of cards. One challenge of this approach is designing means to subtly...

Biology of rank: social status sets up monkeys' cocaine use. (Science News This Week).(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... Power has its perks, even for laboratory-housed monkeys. When moved from individual to group cages, socially dominant male monkeys exhibit a brain-chemistry change that fosters resistance to using drugs such as cocaine, a new study finds. ...

The right fats: omega-3 fatty acids soothe inflamed colons. (Science News This Week).(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... A diet containing fish oil, which is rich in healthful omega-3 fatty acids, reduces symptoms of a colitis-like condition in rats, according to new research. The finding suggests that a proper dietary balance of beneficial fats could be an...

Anthrax-toxin component deciphered. (Science News This Week).(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... Images depict the molecular structure of edema factor, a component of the anthrax toxin. The X-ray diffraction models show the molecule before it enters a cell (top left) and once inside (top right). The two bottom images show the opposite side...

Smallpox redux: world body suggests keeping the virus. (Science News This Week).(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... In response to fears following the Sept. 11 attacks, the executive board of the World Health Organization (WHO) last week voted against a 2002 deadline for destruction of the variola virus responsible for smallpox. Meeting in Geneva on Jan. 17,...

Shower power: raindrops shoot seeds out with a splat. (Science News This Week).(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... Brazilian botanists have caught Mother Nature playing with squirt guns. When raindrops hit the triangular seed capsules of a Bertolonia plant, water floods internal channels, then squirts out the capsule corners carrying seeds with it,...

Calculating cartoons: physics simulations create convincing illusions in films and games.
January 26, 2002... In the animated film Monsters, Inc., James P. Sullivan is an 8-foot-tall monster who's covered from head to toe in a luxurious powder-blue pelt with faint red polka dots. What makes him stand out in the already eye-popping domain of computer...

The persistent problem of cystic fibrosis: why are people with this disease plagued by lung infections?(ongoing research to understand cystic fibrosis)
January 26, 2002... Breathing is one of those simple, natural acts that usually go unnoticed. Yet breathing rarely comes easily to people with cystic fibrosis. Thick, gooey mucus clogs the lungs of most people with the disease and serves as a breeding ground for...

Algae do battle with bioweaponry. (Environment).(toxic chemicals released in Swedish lakes)(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... Beneath the frozen surface of Sweden's lakes, algae wage wars over nutrients. One combatant apparently prevails by releasing chemicals toxic to its adversaries, according to a new study. Researchers already have found evidence in ocean...

A new way to lower cholesterol. (Biomedicine).(engineering of human cells to create a fluorescent protein)(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... Cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins are at the forefront of the fight against heart disease. They work by blocking the synthesis of cholesterol inside cells. This, in turn, causes cells to produce more of a compound known as...

Nerve cells ring in the Winter Olympics. (Biology).(tissue engineering research)(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... Among the proud hosts of the forthcoming Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City are some creative tissue engineers at the local university. In an effort that displays the increasing control biologists can exert over living tissue, Patrick A. Tresco...

Metallic materials made to order. (Materials Science).(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... A new process for creating specifically patterned microstructures could lead to new catalysts and optoelectronic devices. To make the materials, Rolf Hempelmann of Saarland University in Saarbrucken, Germany, and his colleagues prepared...

Are pictures of extrasolar planets in the offing? (Astronomy).(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... The first image of a planet orbiting a star other than the sun may be only a year away, thanks to a powerful image-sharpening technique called adaptive optics. Because stars are thousands to billions of times brighter than their planets,...

Seeing green: color of the cosmos. (Cosmology).(Brief Article)
January 26, 2002... We live in a pale-green universe. That's the conclusion of researchers who analyzed the colors of some 200,000 galaxies as part of the largest galaxy survey completed to date. The survey mapped the brightness and distances of galaxies in...

Flow makes no splash. (Letters).
January 26, 2002... The occurrence of underflows or hyperpycnal currents originating from the mouth of the Salinas River should be no surprise, given the long-known riverine bathometric feature existing between the river and Monterey Canyon ("Sediments sink...

Tough comments. (Letters).
January 26, 2002... The article "Touch choices" (SN: 12/1/01, p. 344) was disappointing on two grounds. First, it was poorly researched, quoting numerous lawyers for farming interests opposed to the Endangered Species Act. Second, it failed to note that most of...