Science News articles from July 2004

Science News archives from July 2004

SARS control: first nasal vaccine effective in monkeys.(This Week)
July 3, 2004... Inhaling a new experimental vaccine may offer protection against severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. The vaccine, tested in African green monkeys, is the first to be administered directly to the respiratory tract and is also the first...

Sweet frequency: implantable glucose sensor transmits data wirelessly.(This Week)
July 3, 2004... A new glucose sensor could help people with diabetes gain better control over their blood sugar while eliminating the hassles of daily pinprick tests. The researchers at Pennsylvania State University in State College who developed the sensor...

Powerhouse astronomy: blazing black hole from the early universe.(This Week)
July 3, 2004... A jet of matter and radiation shooting from a newly discovered black hole could provide new information about the radiation left over from the Big Bang and about the first galaxies. This monster black hole, one of the heaviest and most distant...

Before the booze: cactus extract dulls hangovers.(This Week)
July 3, 2004... An inflammation-fighting plant extract, taken hours before consuming alcohol, appears to suppress some of the symptoms brought on by a bout of heavy drinking. The new study, supported by the extract's manufacturer, may have intriguing...

Erectus experiment: fossil find expands Stone Age anatomy.(This Week)
July 3, 2004... During the heart of the Stone Age, from 1.7 million to 400,000 years ago, populations of our ancient ancestors in Africa, Asia, and Europe often served as brief evolutionary experiments, with most dying out before they established themselves as...

Rewriting the nitrogen story: plant cycles nutrient forward and backward.(This Week)
July 3, 2004... A study of a little yellow flower could add a new arrow to textbook drawings of the nitrogen cycle. The horseshoe vetch (Hippocrepiscomosa), a European relative of beans, is the first plant discovered to break down nitrogen-containing...

Neck bones on the menu: fossil vertebrae show species interaction.(This Week)
July 3, 2004... Three fossil neck bones from an ancient flying reptile--one of them with the broken tip of a tooth embedded in it--indicate that the winged creatures occasionally fell victim to meat eaters. The telltale vertebrae were found within a...

Comfortably numb: anesthetics are slowly giving up the secrets of how they work.
July 3, 2004... Take a stroll through the Boston Public Garden, the nation's oldest botanical garden, and you'll find an array of plaques, monuments, and memorials honoring famous people of history. Not far from a statue of George Washington on horseback,...

Dead heat: the health consequences of global warming could be many.
July 3, 2004... If the mere thought of global warming makes you break out in a sweat--an unpleasant consequence, to be sure--just wait until the heat gets here in earnest. Some time this century, lengthy heat waves like the one that killed thousands in Europe...

Cometary encounter.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
July 3, 2004... Planetary scientists are feasting on close-up images of Comet Wild-2 (pronounced "vilt-two"). When the Stardust spacecraft flew within 236 kilometers of the frozen body on Jan. 6, NASA released five images showing craters, spires, mesas, and...

Neurons take charge to change messages.(Neuroscience)(Brief Article)
July 3, 2004... Neurons in a developing embryo respond to changes in their own electrical activity by altering the types of chemical messengers that they produce, a new study suggests. This finding counters the traditional scientific view that genes alone...

Celiac disease affects kids' minds.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
July 3, 2004... Attention deficits have joined a growing list of neurological problems associated with the intestinal disorder known as celiac disease. Caused by a genetic trait that leads to improper digestion of cereal proteins such as gluten, the...

Two-handed protein may protect DNA.(Microbiology)
July 3, 2004... Scientists have found a new clue to the remarkable capability of an unusual bacterial species, Deinococcus radiodurans, to survive large doses of radiation and extended periods without water. This bacterium can withstand a dose of radiation...

Jumping spiders buzz, thump when dancing.(Vibration)(Brief Article)
July 3, 2004... Some jumping spiders, famed for eye-catching ornamentation and courtship dancing, have recently been recognized as accomplished vibration artists as well. New tests show that among Habronattus dossenus, a male's display--even if it's visually...

Farmer ant species may have lost all its males.(Asexuality)(Brief Article)
July 3, 2004... Minuscule gardeners that grow fungus for food may be the first ant species that scientists have discovered to have no power of sexual reproduction. Several lines of evidence suggest that the species Mycocepurus smithii consists only of females...

Why does a buddy help another male flirt?(Cooperation)(Brief Article)
July 3, 2004... Male lance-tailed manakins put on a two-guy show when courting females, but only the alpha bird reaps the immediate benefits when the performance succeeds, says a new study. So, what's in it for the sidekick? An earlier study in a...

Ultrasound alarms by ground squirrels.(Warnings)(Brief Article)
July 3, 2004... Richardson's ground squirrels may squeak out ultrasonic calls when sensing danger, thereby alerting nearby squirrels but minimizing the noise that might be detected by predators. Ultrasonic communication has been reported in other rodent...

The Art of the Catapult: Build Greek Ballistae, Roman Onagers, English Trebuchets and More Ancient Artillery.(Books)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 3, 2004... THE ART OF THE CATAPULT: Build Greek Ballistae, Roman Onagers, English Trebuchets and More Ancient Artillery WILLIAM GURSTELLE For ancient armies, the catapult was a formidable weapon in laying siege to castles and forts. Warriors that...

Cogwheels of the Mind: the Story of Venn Diagrams.(Books)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 3, 2004... COGWHEELS OF THE MIND: The Story of Venn Diagrams A.W.F. EDWARDS The idea is simple Three overlapping circles intersect to create eight distinct areas Despite their simplicity, such diagrams can be used to represent complex logical...

The Complete World of Greek Mythology.(Books)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 3, 2004... THE COMPLETE WORLD OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY RICHARD BUXTON One of the richest legacies of the ancient Greek people is their mythology, which thrives in various incarnations even today. Buxton, a Greek scholar at the University of Bristol in...

The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: the Story of the Penicillin Miracle.(Books)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 3, 2004... THE MOLD IN DR. FLOREY'S COAT: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle ERIC LAX This revision of history seeks to set the record straight about the roles of Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey, and Ernst Chain in the creation of penicillin...

More Than Kin and Less Than Kind: the Evolution of Family Conflict.(Books)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 3, 2004... MORE THAN KIN AND LESS THAN KIND: The Evolution of Family Conflict DOUGLAS W. MOCK Competition is prevalent in every aspect of life, from the stock market to the classroom, but sibling rivalry is perhaps the best example of humanity's...

Whale, of an annoyance.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 3, 2004... In "Din among the Orcas: Are whale watchers making too much noise?" (SN: 5/1/04, p. 275), Rus Hoelzel states, "One thing I want to make clear is that I think whale watching is a good thing." He then states that the activity may just need...

Tooth truth?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 3, 2004... "Unsettling Association: Dental X rays linked to low-birth-weight babies" (SN: 5/1/04, p. 277) suggests that somehow X rays caused low-birth-weight babies in women who had their teeth X-rayed during their pregnancies. Here is an alternative...

Clearing up blurry vision: scientists gaze toward causes of myopia.(This Week)
July 10, 2004... Next time you can't make out a distant highway sign, blame your parents. Scientists in the United Kingdom have found that myopia, or nearsightedness, is predominantly hereditary, and they're beginning to unravel the genetic mechanism that...

Grainy geyser: tall squirts reveal sand's liquid ways.(research of granular materials)
July 10, 2004... Loose sand can pack so strongly and densely that it can support a house, yet it can also flow easily, as in an hourglass. Physicists in the Netherlands have now accentuated the liquid behavior of granular materials by reducing the sizes of the...

Just a tad is too much: less is worse for tadpoles exposed to chemicals.(Atrazine's adverse effects)
July 10, 2004... The herbicide atrazine is more likely to kill developing amphibians when it is highly diluted than when it's much more concentrated in aquatic environments, a new study suggests. Although counterintuitive, the finding is consistent with some...

Living long in the tooth: grandparents may have rocked late Stone Age.(This Week)
July 10, 2004... A memorable senior moment may have occurred toward the end of the Stone Age. Around 30,000 years ago, the number of people surviving long enough to become grandparents dramatically increased, altering the social landscape and provoking major...

Plastic vs. plants: mulch method changes tomato's gene activity.(This Week)
July 10, 2004... A suite of at least 10 genes in a tomato plant behaves differently depending on the farmer's mulch-and-fertilizer routine, according to an unusual analysis. Earlier work showed that when researchers mulch with a layer of mown vetch instead...

City heat: urban areas' warmth affects plant growth.(This Week)
July 10, 2004... Satellite observations of eastern North America show that plants in and around urban areas bud earlier in the spring and retain their foliage later in the fall than do plants in nearby rural settings. Although that trend had been noted before,...

Titanic images, groovy shots: Cassini arrives at Saturn.(space probes)
July 10, 2004... After a 7-year, 3.5-billion-mile journey, the Cassini spacecraft last week slipped through a gap between two of the icy rings circling Saturn and became the first spacecraft to orbit the distant planet. The probe, which will tour Saturn and...

Heavenly passage: Venus puts on the show of a lifetime.(Cover Story)
July 10, 2004... It was a beach party the likes of which no one had seen for more than a century. On the eastern edge of Nantucket Island on June 8, more than 100 sky watchers waited in the gray predawn light. Clouds hid the first rays as the sun rose over the...

Dying before their time: studies of prematurely old mice hint that DNA mutations underlie aging.
July 10, 2004... With one look, you can usually tell whether someone is old or young. Wrinkled skin or smooth. Thinning hair or thick locks. Bifocals or Ray-Bans. These are just a few of the overt clues. Far less obvious are the age-related signs that show up...

Controlling the speed of solar eruptions.(coronal mass ejections )(Brief Article)
July 10, 2004... The billion-ton blobs of magnetized gas that the sun sporadically hurls into space have a speed limit, a new study suggests. These solar eruptions, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), can't reach Earth in less than half a day. That's...

Caloric threats from sugarfree drinks?(Nutrition)(Brief Article)
July 10, 2004... Animals--and people--learn to link food sweetness and viscosity with high caloric content. Animal studies in the July International Journal of Obesity suggest that regularly ingesting sugar substitutes or artificially sweetened drinks might...

DNA coordinates assembly of glassy nanoscale structures: nanotechnology.(Deoxyribo nucleic acid)(Brief Article)
July 10, 2004... A team of Japanese chemists has used DNA as a scaffold to construct miniature rings and rods out of silica, the stuff of glass. According to Seiji Shinkai and his colleagues at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, this marks the first time that...

Warmer climate, decreased rice yield.(Earth Science)(Brief Article)
July 10, 2004... Agricultural data gathered over a dozen years at a rice paddy in the Philippines suggest that climate changes brought about by global warming could significantly diminish rice yields. At the International Rice Research Institute in Los...

Rat DNA points to Pacific migrations.(Genetics)(Brief Article)
July 10, 2004... Archaeologists regard members of the ancient, seafaring Lapita culture as the ancestors of Polynesians, who now live on a large group of western Pacific islands collectively known as Oceania. Where the Lapita originally came from and the way in...

Watching the biological clock.(prediction of menopause in women by overy testing)(Brief Article)
July 10, 2004... Physicians can predict when a woman will start menopause by giving her ovaries an ultrasound examination, according to a new study. In an upcoming Human Reproduction, W. Hamish Wallace of the University of Edinburgh and Thomas W. Kelsey of...

Protective enzyme has a downside: Asthma.(chitinase )(Brief Article)
July 10, 2004... An enzyme whose natural job may be to ward off fungi and parasites contributes to the lung inflammation characteristic of asthma, a new study concludes. The enzyme is known as a chitinase because it breaks down the complex sugar chitin, a tough...

Mexican murals store magnetic data.(Archaeology)(Brief Article)
July 10, 2004... Tiny magnetic particles found in the pigments of some ancient Mexican murals record the direction of Earth's magnetic field when the paint dried, a phenomenon that could help archaeologists determine the age of frescoes throughout Mexico and...

Becoming A Tiger: How Baby Animals Learn to Live in the Wild.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 10, 2004... Every animal is born with the instinct to survive but not necessarily the skills to do so. Just as our parents guide us as we learn to find food and communicate, so do tiger, bird, and bonobo moms and dads. McCarthy, coauthor of When Elephants...

The Big One.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 10, 2004... Bigger in terms of magnitude than the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the New Madrid earthquakes that unfolded in late 1811 and early 1812 comprised a trifecta of temblors that stuck in seemingly unlikely locations, Missouri and Arkansas. On...

One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 10, 2004... The title of this book references Rudyard Kipling's poem "Recessional," a cautionary tale about the pride and arrogance that preceded the fall of the capital of the ancient Assyrian empire. The authors recall that this ancient Mesopotamian...

Shamans Sorcerers and Saints: a Prehistory of Religion.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 10, 2004... From his vantage point as an archaeologist, Hayden considers the evolution of religious behavior from prehistoric times to the present. While some of his colleagues question the relevance of archaeological relics In the understanding of...

Language of music.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 10, 2004... The study by Hyde and Peretz about people inept at all things musical ("Brain roots of music depreciation," SN: 5/8/04, p. 302) made me think of my spouse of 20 years. In addition to a lifetime of utter tone deafness, he also nearly didn't...

Prescient fiction.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 10, 2004... The phenomenon described in your article "Toxin Takeout: Frogs borrow poison for skin from ants" (SN: 5/8/04, p. 291), an animal manufacturing natural poisons using chemical precursors in the environment, has been described before--in a work of...

Judgment call.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 10, 2004... I am not an advocate of capital punishment, but I wonder whether the people and organizations who are so anxious to use findings on brain maturity ("Teen Brains on Trial," SN: 5/8/04, p. 299) to raise the age of capitol punishment have...

Sea change: carbon dioxide imperils marine ecosystems.(This Week)
July 17, 2004... Almost half the carbon dioxide produced by human activity in the past 2 centuries is now dissolved in the oceans. It's wreaking chemical changes there that, if unchecked, could threaten the capacity of corals and other marine organisms to make...

A toxic side of weight loss: pollutants may slow body's metabolism.(This Week)
July 17, 2004... Weight loss isn't only frustrating, it's also complicated. Scientists expect a person's metabolism to slow as he or she loses weight, but there's sometimes more of a drop than the equations predict. Researchers call this excessive slowdown...

Quote.(pollutants alter energy metabolism)(Brief Article)
July 17, 2004... "Modern pollutants probably complicate the regulation of energy." ANGELO TREMBLAY, Laval University

Groomed DNA handles threats: mothering styles alter rats' stress responses.(This Week)
July 17, 2004... A rodent mother can't scold or praise her offspring, but her approach to mothering lays a genetic foundation for her pups' lifelong response to threats, neuroscientists have found. Rats raised by moms who frequently lick and groom them...

Nitrogen power: new crystal packs a lot of punch.(polymeric nitrogen)
July 17, 2004... More than a decade ago, theoreticians predicted that nitrogen, the major constituent of air, could assume a three-dimensional, polymeric structure. Now, chemists have made this polymeric nitrogen, and they say it might someday serve as a...

Feel the force: magnetic probe finds lone electron.(ultrasensitive magnetic resonance imaging)
July 17, 2004... When a patient undergoes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the scanner makes tissues visible by tapping into a magnetlike property of many trillions of protons in the patient's body. Known as spin, this quantum-mechanical trait also shows up in...

Leukemia fighter: drug could combat resistant cases.(This Week)
July 17, 2004... The drug imatinib, also called Gleevec, is the kind of success story most scientists only dream of. Since its FDA approval in 2001, imatinib has rescued thousands of patients from chronic myeloid leukemia, a lethal blood cancer with limited...

Sparrows cheat on sleep: migratory birds are up at night but still stay sharp.(This Week)
July 17, 2004... During their fall migration season, certain sparrows sleep only about a third as much as they do at other times of year, but they manage to keep up their performance on tests of learning, a new lab study indicates. Outside the migration season,...

Counting carbs: despite promising new studies, concerns abound over high-fat diets.
July 17, 2004... One in six U.S. households includes a low-carbohydrate dieter, according to an ACNielsen poll conducted earlier this year. Until last October, Jody Gorran of Delray Beach, Fla., was among them. Despite having followed a sensible, low-fat diet...

Diatom menagerie: engineering microscopic algae to produce designer materials.(Cover Story)
July 17, 2004... Scientists have long prized diatoms, photosynthetic algae that abound in marine and fresh-water ecosystems, because they remove large amounts of a major greenhouse gas--carbon dioxide--from the atmosphere. But another, unusual trait has...

Treaty enacted to preserve crop biodiversity.(Environment)(Brief Article)
July 17, 2004... On June 29, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture went into effect to protect crop biodiversity. Its goal: to foster conservation and sustainable use of plants that may possess genes for disease resistance...

Nanorods go for the gold.(Technology)(Brief Article)
July 17, 2004... To streamline fabrication of future nanoscale electronic circuitry, researchers are investigating ways to dust a surface with tiny semiconductor specks that would arrange themselves into wires and transistors. As a step toward that goal,...

The high cost of staying current.(Science & Society)(Brief Article)
July 17, 2004... Reading peer-reviewed journals remains a primary means by which researchers stay on top of developments in their fields. A new survey confirms what journal subscribers already know: Annual costs for these periodicals are steep. Prices for...

Four die of rabies in transplanted tissues.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
July 17, 2004... Five people recently received tissue transplants from a man who had died, as it turns out, from an undiagnosed rabies infection. All the recipients have since died, four of them from the incurable neurological disease. The donor was...

Bacteria found to release arsenic into groundwater.(Environment)(Brief Article)
July 17, 2004... Millions of people around the world, particularly in southern and southeastern Asia, are exposed to drinking and irrigation water contaminated with arsenic. Now, it appears that the poison gets into groundwater largely through the action of...

Quantum snare entraps key fifth photon.(Physics)(Brief Article)
July 17, 2004... In a new feat of quantum-scale manipulation, physicists have joined five photons in a condition of mutually linked properties called entanglement. Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and his...

Outer space on the cheap.(space tourism)(Brief Article)
July 17, 2004... On June 21, a rocket-powered airplane known as SpaceShipOne soared 100 kilometers above Earth to the fringes of space, carrying out the first-ever private, manned space mission. The flight was a milestone for privately funded efforts to develop...

Female brains know how to fold 'em.(study of brain foldings)(Brief Article)
July 17, 2004... Thanks to their inherently larger bodies, men typically possess larger brains than women do. Size isn't everything, though. Women compensate for the smaller overall volume of their brains by squeezing more folds into some of the space than men...

Carpet Monsters and Killer Spores: a Natural History of Toxic Mold.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 17, 2004... CARPET MONSTERS AND KILLER SPORES: A Natural History of Toxic Mold NICHOLAS P. MONEY We encounter molds every day. They can be in the bread we eat or in the air we breathe. Most of the time, we are oblivious to these mycological run-ins...

The Depths of Space: the Story of the Pioneer Planetary Probes.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 17, 2004... THE DEPTHS OF SPACE: The StOry of the Pioneer Planetary Probes MARK WOLVERTON Human space flight generates heroes and is the stuff of which movies are made. Robotic spacecraft, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini satellite...

Locust: the Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 17, 2004... LOCUST. The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier JEFFREY A. LOCKWOOD In July 1875, the Rocky Mountain locust swept across the Great Rains in biblical proportions. If calculations of...

Why We Do It: Rethinking Sex and the Selfish Gene.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 17, 2004... WHY WE DO IT. Rethinking Sex and the Selfish Gene NILES ELDREDGE Eldredge, a prominent paleontologist and prolific author, attacks the idea that genes are wholly responsible for who we are. He is especially critical of the idea of the...

Readers on reading.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
July 17, 2004... Other librarians and I regularly discuss illiterate, functional, aliterate, and avid readers. I am pleased that research has begun into what happens in readers' brains ("Words in the Brain: Reading program spurs neural rewrite in kids," SN:...

Suicide watch: antidepressants get large-scale inspection.(This Week)
July 24, 2004... In the past 2 years, public and government concerns about a widely used class of antidepressant drugs have grown. There have been indications that these selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, may cause people to try to kill...

Inside plastic transistors: crystal-clear window opens on hidden flows.(This Week)
July 24, 2004... Plastic semiconductors are spawning a new breed of electronic devices that are cheap to make, lightweight, and flexible. The microscopic details of how electric charges move through transistors and other devices made of such materials have...

Quick bite: some gorges carved surprisingly fast.(rock dating)
July 24, 2004... Two river gorges along the Atlantic seaboard were carved out over a geologically short period, according to analyses of rock samples from the chasms. Many large rivers that flow eastward from the Appalachian Mountains spill through narrow...

Dangerous dust? Chemicals in plastics are tied to allergies.(phthalates)
July 24, 2004... Household exposure to synthetic chemicals commonly used in plastics and other products appears to increase a person's risk of developing allergies. At least two such chemicals, called phthalates, are more abundant in dust from homes where...

Deep-sea cukes can't avoid the weather: El Nino changes life 2.5 miles down.(This Week)
July 24, 2004... Even though the water now deep in the ocean won't mingle with upper layers for hundreds of years, topside climate still drives the short-term booms and busts of bottom dwellers. That's the conclusion of a 14-year study of sea cucumbers,...

Parasite pursuit: sand fly coughs up leishmania protozoan's secrets of proliferation.(This Week)
July 24, 2004... Leishmania, a tropical parasite carried by sand flies, spreads prolifically to mammals by forcing the flies to regurgitate as they bite their prey, a new study finds. While still in the sand fly, the parasite secretes--and then multiplies...

Potential block for epilepsy: researchers find new drug target.(This Week)
July 24, 2004... Most epilepsy treatments start after the disease has taken hold. A person might take anticonvulsant drugs to stop seizures or have surgery to remove a damaged portion of the brain. Now, using genetically engineered ice, scientists have...

Trail mix: espionage among the bees.(This Week)(Brief Article)
July 24, 2004... Some bees rely on olfactory spying to capitalize on other bees' hard work, researchers report. When certain bees find food, they mark the trail for their nest mates by leaving odiferous chemicals on leaves and other stopover points during...

End of the line for Hubble? Astronomers ponder space telescope's final years.
July 24, 2004... Black Friday. That's how Steve Beckwith, director of the Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute and his colleagues refer to Jan. 16, 2004, the day that the Hubble Space Telescope got its death sentence. Sean O'Keefe, a NASA...

Generous players: game theory explores the Golden Rule's place in biology.(prisoner's dilemma)
July 24, 2004... Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection seems to describe a brutal world in which creatures compete ruthlessly to promote their own survival. Yet biologists observe that animals and even lower organisms often behave altruistically. A...

Two newly found space molecules.(Sagittarius B2)(Brief Article)
July 24, 2004... Adding to the growing body of evidence that space is rich in organic molecules, researchers have detected two new organic chemicals in a large interstellar cloud. Known as Sagittarius B2, this extremely cold mass of star-forming gas and dust is...

Seeds of agriculture move back in time.(Archaeology)(Brief Article)
July 24, 2004... Researchers have already established that people living in the Middle East around 23,000 years ago fished and hunted. Excavations along the shore of the Sea of Galilee in Israel now indicate that the menu for these Stone Age folk also included...

Tarantula venom disrupts cells in unexpected way.(Biochemistry)(Brief Article)
July 24, 2004... Cells regulate their internal environment using a sensitive network of membrane channels that control the flow of ions and water molecules into and out of the cells (SN: 10/18/03, p. 246). Two new studies published in the July 8 Nature claim...