Science News articles from July 2005

Science News archives from July 2005

Sleepless in SeaWorld: some newborns and moms forgo slumber.(This Week)(sleep biology)
July 2, 2005... Orca-whale and dolphin mothers and their newborns appear not to sleep for a month after the pups' birth, researchers report. Neither parent nor offspring shows any ill effects from the long waking stint, and the animals don't later compensate...

Running interference: fresh approach to fighting inflammation.(This Week)
July 2, 2005... The more scientists learn about inflammation, the less they like it. Although this bodily process speeds wound healing and corrals microbes, it can also do plenty of harm, as seen in people with arthritis, asthma, and a host of other ailments....

Muscle men: lab-grown cells mirror source's characteristics.(This Week)(cell metabolism varies with lean and fat people)
July 2, 2005... Researchers studying muscle cells maintained in petri dishes have found that the cells burn sugar and fat with the same efficiency as do the people from whom the cells were isolated. The finding may give scientists a leg up on understanding the...

Bacteria ride the tide: moon's phases predict water quality at beaches.(This Week)
July 2, 2005... At many ocean beaches, full and new moons coincide with the greatest concentrations of bacteria in the water, researchers in California have determined. The new finding suggests that extreme tides, which occur fortnightly in synchrony with...

Inside a melting crystal.(This Week)(melting temperature of object depends on material structure )(Brief Article)
July 2, 2005... Small defects in a crystal, whether an ice cube or cocoa butter, cause it to melt from the inside out, a new study shows. In an upcoming Science, physicists led by Arjun Yodh of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia describe a model...

Pebbles from heaven: tracking planets in the making.(This Week)(planet formation identification by tracing radio waves)
July 2, 2005... Recording radio waves from the region around a young star, astronomers have for the first time documented a key step in the rocky road to planethood: making pebbles. The standard recipe for planet formation starts with a disk of gas, dust,...

Mother knows worst: abusive parenting spans generations in monkeys.(This Week)
July 2, 2005... It's bad enough that some rhesus monkey mothers regularly kick, hit, bite, and otherwise brutalize their babies. But to make things worse, females exposed to such abuse as infants often grow up to become abusive parents themselves, perpetuating...

He clones, she clones: dad, mom ants as different species.(This Week)
July 2, 2005... A study of the insects called little fire ants may be as close as science gets to showing males and females as separate species. Those species still share a name, Wasmannia auropunctata. The little fire ants live in seemingly unexceptional...

Sound off: with RNA interference, gene silencing roars into labs.
July 2, 2005... Although you don't hear a thing, there is a raucous party going on inside each one of your cells. Each minute of every day, molecules are murmuring information from one to the next in an ancient version of the game of telephone. DNA, the...

Panning distant dust: the hunt for extrasolar planets gets dirty.(astronomy )(Cover Story)
July 2, 2005... Mike Meyer was just 28, finishing up his Ph.D. thesis on baby stars, when his career turned to dust. Astronomers announced the discovery of a planet orbiting a sunlike star beyond the solar system. With planet hunting becoming the hottest topic...

Antarctica's gaining ice in some spots.(EARTH SCIENCE)(snowfall surveys)(Brief Article)
July 2, 2005... Large portions of Antarctica's icy land-mass may be storing enough snowfall to slow the rise in sea level suspected to be caused by global warming. That's the suggestion of measurements taken by spacecraft over a dozen years. Radar...

Sensor measures mass of one DNA molecule.(TECHNOLOGY)(biosensor that weighs DNA strands)(Brief Article)
July 2, 2005... First, it was a lone bacterium; then, a solitary virus. Now, scientists have pushed the limits of ultrasensitive detection even farther to determine the mass of a single DNA molecule. Such precise biosensor measurements could lead to faster and...

Placebo gives brain emotional break.(NEUROSCIENCE)(Brief Article)
July 2, 2005... The placebo effect, in which people experience health benefits from inactive medications, thrives on great expectations. According to a new study of placebo-induced reduction of anxiety, such expectations trigger a decline in the brain's...

Monkeys keep track of small numbers.(BEHAVIOR)(number skills research with monkeys behaviour)(Brief Article)
July 2, 2005... Without any training, rhesus monkeys recognize when the number of other monkeys' voices that they hear corresponds to the number of monkeys' faces that they see. This new finding indicates that monkeys accurately count small quantities that are...

Flashy news from Mars.(PLANETARY SCIENCE)(martian atmosphere meteor shower observations)(Brief Article)
July 2, 2005... Earlylast year, just 2 months after the rover Spirit landed on the Red Planet, the craft recorded a strange streak across the Martian sky. Having analyzed the brightness, timing, and orientation of the streak, researchers now conclude that the...

Sleepy teens haven't got circadian rhythm.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief Article)
July 2, 2005... High schools that begin classes as early as 7:30 a.m. deprive teenagers of sleep, and attempts to reset an adolescent's biological clock fail to solve the problem, a study in the June Pediatrics finds. Sixty high school students in...

Long search reveals cell receptor for plant growth.(BOTANY)(Brief Article)
July 2, 2005... More than 70 years after biologists identified the powerful plant hormone auxin, they have finally found how plant cells detect it. Auxin plays a role in just about every aspect of plant growth, from roots to shoots. Gardeners use...

Chlorine's fate?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 2, 2005... "Special Treatment: Tiny technology tackles mega messes" (SN: 4/23/05, p. 266), on the reaction of nanoparticles of iron with trichloroethane (TCE) contaminating an aquifer, states that the TCE is converted "into ethane." What happens to the...

On the sunny side.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 2, 2005... It boggles my mind that someone paid for a study of the benefits of petroleum-based fuel in Africa ("Change of fuel could extend lives in Africa," SN: 5/7/05, p. 301) when a superior, lower-cost solution is already available. For the cost of...

You can't get good help.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 2, 2005... "In Its Own Image: Simple robot replicates itself block by block" (SN: 5/14/05, p. 310) makes the common claim that self-replicating robots could be a boon for clearing minefields. In truth, a complex electronic device simply does not last long...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
July 2, 2005... In "Comeback Bird: Tales from the search for the ivory-billed woodpecker" (SN: 6/11/05, p. 376), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Donna Ball's name was misspelled.

Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Alan Burdick)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 2, 2005... OUT OF EDEN: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion ALAN BURDICK Nature is dynamic. Populations wax and wane and wander and, in the long run, plants and animals evolve. But humanity's interaction with nature has accelerated other species'...

The Violent Universe: Joyrides through the X-ray Cosmos.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Kimberly Weaver)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 2, 2005... THE VIOLENT UNIVERSE: Joyrides through the x-ray Cosmos KIMBERLY WEAVER Our universe is filled with enormous cataclysms-supernova explosions, galactic collisions, and stellar implosions--but until recently, many of these events went...

Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Katharine Anderson)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 2, 2005... PREDICTING THE WEATHER: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology KATHARINE ANDERSON Once the telegraph escalated the speed of information dissemination, maritime-dependent Great Britain in 1854 established a government office to...

Birds of the World.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Myriam Baran and illustration by Gilles Martin)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 2, 2005... BIRDS OF THE WORLD GILLES MARTIN AND MYRIAM BARAN Photographer Martin traveled all five continents to record the spectacular images in this book. His full-color pictures, mostly close-ups of beautiful, individual birds, are the...

Patent It Yourself.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by David Pressman)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 2, 2005... PATENT IT YOURSELF DAVID PRESSMAN This revised and considerably enlarged 11th edition of Pressman's how-to book is recommended for anyone ready to file a patent either independently or with the aid of an attorney. For inventors...

Same difference: twins' gene regulation isn't identical.(Epigenetic inheritance research report)
July 9, 2005... Although identical twins have identical DNA, they often harbor clear-cut differences: slight variations in appearance or stark distinctions in disease susceptibility, for example. Scientists have suggested that the interplay between nature and...

Core finding: latest, oddest planet hints at how orbs form.(extra solar planet obervations)
July 9, 2005... The 160 extrasolar planets discovered over the past decade constitute an odd menagerie. They include giant, Jupiter-like bodies with temperatures hot enough to melt metal, planets in orbits nearly as elongated as the paths of comets, and at...

Honey, we shrank the snow lotus: picking big plants reduces species' height.(This Week)(snow lotus evolutionary adaptation)
July 9, 2005... Plant collectors have become a force of evolution. The way in which they've harvested a Himalayan wildflower has inadvertently driven the species toward a shorter form, according to a new report. Traditional healers in Asia have long prized...

Heartening responses: depression drugs may aid survival after heart attack.(This Week)
July 9, 2005... Each year, about 200,000 U.S. survivors of heart attacks or related cardiac problems develop major depression, a condition that sharply boosts their chances of having a potentially fatal heart attack. An analysis of data from a large, federally...

Striking oil: high-pressure processing minimizes trans fats.(This Week)
July 9, 2005... Improvements to the techniques used to hydrogenate vegetable oils could soon fill store shelves with packaged foods containing reduced quantities of unhealthful trans fats. Manufacturers use the process of hydrogenation to make vegetable...

Growth slumps: melting permafrost shapes Alaskan lakes.(This Week)
July 9, 2005... Thousands of fast-growing, egg-shaped lakes--most with their pointy ends aimed toward the northwest--pepper the landscape of northern Alaska. A new study suggests that these enigmatic waters expand when their permafrost banks melt, rather than...

A grand slam: in a winning move, NASA probe burrows into a comet.(National Aeronautics and Space Administration)(Tempel 1 comet observations)(Brief Article)
July 9, 2005... The first fireworks this July 4 came from space. At 1:52 a.m. Eastern time, a 372-kilogram copper projectile released from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft slammed into Comet Tempel 1, producing an incandescent flash. After a second flash a second...

Volcanic hot spots: molten messengers from deep within the earth.(Kilauea a active volcanoe under study)
July 9, 2005... Kilauea, a volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, has been erupting for more than 22 years. That marathon eruption is just one of the features that make this tropical peak stand out in the volcanic crowd. Kilauea's lavas, which often wend their...

Chemical Galaxy: a new vision of the periodic table of the elements.(Science Mall shopping)
July 9, 2005... The Chemical Galaxy Poster is a new creation in the world of periodic table charts. Developed by Philip Stewart, is an ecologist at Oxford University, this table was created in a spiral design. It uses a starry pathway to link the elements and...

The electromagnetic radiation spectrum chart.(Science Mall shopping)
July 9, 2005... This chart includes all known ranges of EMR including: gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet light, visible light, infrared, microwaves, radio waves (ULF, VLF, LF, MF, HF, long, short, HAM, VHF, UHF, SHF, EHF), cosmic microwave background radiation...

The Planets.(Science Mall shopping)
July 9, 2005... The Planets poster has great color pictures and information about our solar system! One of the best posters we have seen on this subject. If you want to know the numerical particulars about the planets and the Sun while looking at great...

Jewelry with a story: Gold Basin meteorite pendant.(Science Mall shopping)
July 9, 2005... The Gold Basin meteorite field was discovered in 1995, in the Gold Basin region of the Mojave Desert, Arizona. This meteorite contains both chondrules and metal flaking and is an L4 type chondrite with a terrestrial age of between 15,000 and...

Night of the crusher: the waking nightmare of sleep paralysis propels people into a spirit world.(Cover Story)
July 9, 2005... As a college student in 1964, David J. Hufford met the dreaded Night Crusher. Exhausted from a bout of mononucleosis and studying for finals, Hufford retreated one December day to his rented, off-campus room and fell into a deep sleep. An hour...

Stem cell shift may lead to infections, leukemia.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief Article)
July 9, 2005... Researchers have long wondered why elderly people suffer more infections and have a greater chance of developing myeloid leukemia, a type of blood cancer, than younger people do. Now, research in mice suggests that the aging of blood-producing...

A nanoprinter for cheaper diagnostics.(diagnostic chips for screening genes)(Brief Article)
July 9, 2005... Using strands of DNA as movable type, scientists have created a miniaturized printing technique for mass-producing medical-diagnostic chips. In the technique, developed by Francesco Stellaeci of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

Rumblings from a dead star.(Supernova remnants observations of dead star outburst)(Brief Article)
July 9, 2005... As seen from Earth, a massive Milky Way star died in a supernova explosion some 325 years ago. But the dead star's burned-out core isn't fading away quietly. Astronomers have evidence that that the cinder recently underwent its own outburst....

More junk makes for better dads.(ZOOLOGY)(Prairie vole parental devotion linke to DNA sequences)(Brief Article)
July 9, 2005... Prairie vole dads are models of dedicated fatherhood. Even among them, however, some dads are more exemplary than others. Now, a new molecules-to-behavior analysis links particularly dutiful fatherhood in these hamster-size rodents to a stretch...

Epilepsy surgery stands test of time.(patient outcome of brain temporal lobe surgery)(Brief Article)
July 9, 2005... Examinations of people who 30 years earlier had elected to have brain surgery for epilepsy show that half of them have been free of seizures nearly all of that time. William H. Theodore and Kathy Kelley of the National Institute of...

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Sean B. Carroll)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 9, 2005... ENDLESS FORMS MOST BEAUTIFUL: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom SEAN B. CARROLL This book is an introduction to evo devo, or evolutionary developmental biology. Author Carroll is at the forefront of this...

Vital Signs 2005.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(edition of Worldwatch Institue )(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 9, 2005... VITAL SIGNS 2005 WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE This is the latest edition of the Worldwatch Institute's annual assessment of key health indicators for Earth and its inhabitants. The book covers data such as consumption and production of food and...

Nanofuture: What's Nest for Nanotechnology.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by J. Storrs Hall)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 9, 2005... NANOFUTURE: What's NeXt for Nanotechnology J. STORRS HALL Nanotechnology has become a buzzword for promoting products from stain-resistant pants to skin creams. Lately, it's been a science fiction bogeyman as well. This book works to dispel...

The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Guy Deutscher )(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 9, 2005... THE UNFOLDING OF LANGUAGE: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention GUY DEUTSCHER Historical linguist Deutscher in this hefty book presents the origins of language. He tackles tricky topics such as why different languages order...

Green Living: The E Magazine Handbook for Living Lightly on the Earth.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by editors of Environmental magazine)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 9, 2005... GREEN LIVING: The E Magazine Handbook for Living Lightly on the Earth THE EDITORS OF E/THE ENVIRONMENTAL MAGAZINE AS people become increasingly concerned with their health and the environment's, more products are being developed to answer...

Editor's note.(Science News appoints Elizabeth Marincola as President)(Editorial)
July 9, 2005... This week, we are pleased to welcome Elizabeth Marincola as the new president of Science Service and publisher of Science News. She succeeds Donald R. Harless, who retired after 34 years at Science Service, including 7 years as president and...

Codes for killers: knowledge of microbes could lead to cures.(Trypanosoma genome research reports)
July 16, 2005... Scientists have deciphered the DNA of the parasites responsible for three deadly diseases: African sleeping sickness, Chagas' disease, and leishmaniasis. This information could open new routes to preventing and treating these conditions, which...

Cancer switch: good gene is shut off in various malignancies.(This Week)
July 16, 2005... A gene called Reprimo is shut down in several cancers but rarely in healthy cells, a new study shows. This finding suggests that the gene's normal action would somehow inhibit these cancers. What's more, Reprimo is stalled in some precancerous...

Brain power: stem cells put a check on nerve disorders.(antiinflammatory properties of neuro stem cells)
July 16, 2005... Famous for their capacity to turn into any type of nerve cell, adult neural stem cells can also serve as anti-inflammation police in the brain, researchers have found. When injected into mice with an inflammatory brain disorder similar to...

Arctic foulers: foraging seabirds carry contaminants home.(This Week)
July 16, 2005... When birds forage at sea, they pick up mercury and pesticide residues, which end up accumulating near nesting colonies, suggests a study in Arctic Canada. Some 10,000 pairs of medium-size o seabirds called northern fulmars (Fulmarus...

Power-laden winds sweep North America.(wind power capacity)(Brief Article)
July 16, 2005... There's ample wind in the United States to supply all the country's electricity, according to Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University and his colleague Cristina L. Archer. They base that claim on data from about 2,400 locations in North...

Pollution ups blood pressure: inhaled particles linked to transient effect.(This Week)
July 16, 2005... If being stuck in traffic seems to elevate your blood pressure, the stress of driving could be only partly to blame. In a laboratory setting, volunteers breathing pollutants generated by sources such as vehicle engines experience slight but...

Realistic time machine? New design could forgo exotic ingredient.(space time)
July 16, 2005... The laws of physics seem to allow time travel, but no one has had much hope of building an actual time machine because it would take such exotic conditions and materials. Now, physicist Amos Ori of the Technion Israel Institute of...

Triple play: a planet with three suns.(This Week)
July 16, 2005... From the vantage point of a newly discovered planet 149 light-years from Earth, it isn't hard to look on the bright side: Three suns grace the skies above this hot, Jupiterlike body. The planet tightly orbits the main star of a closely knit...

Dr. Feynman's doodles: how one scientist's simple sketches transformed physics.
July 16, 2005... The next time you get a letter, its stamp might have printed on it examples of one the greatest conceptual tools of modern physics. The tool is a kind of line drawing, and a bunch of those drawings appear on the face of a new U.S. postage stamp...

Van go: delivering Feynman's vision to the people.(Brief Article)
July 16, 2005... In the late 1980s, when Michelle Feynman would drive up in a big brown-and-tan van covered with odd-looking symbols, the other students at her Pasadena, Calif., art college would gape. Those trying to decipher the symbols didn't know that she...

Bright future: new materials and devices bring white LEDs closer to home.(light-emitting diodes)
July 16, 2005... Even though 125 years have passed since Thomas Edison invented the incandescent lightbulb, his basic technology is still the main source of light in most homes today. That may change over the next decade, however, in favor of light-emitting...

Bacterial tresses conduct electricity.(Geobacter pilus electrical properties)(Brief Article)
July 16, 2005... Bacteria that have hairlike structures called pill usually use them to attach to objects and to move around. However, new findings suggest that pill on a group of species known as Geobacter play a different role: They act as nanowires that...

Cells in heart can regenerate dead tissue.(heart stem cells )(Brief Article)
July 16, 2005... Stem cells in parts of the heart that have survived a heart attack can be prodded to regenerate tissue that was killed by the attack, recent experiments suggest. Doctors ultimately might use a battery of stem cell-stimulating molecules "to...

Vaccines against Marburg and Ebola viruses advance.(IMMUNOLOGY)(Brief Article)
July 16, 2005... Scientists have developed two new vaccines against the killer Ebola and Marburg viruses. In laboratory tests, the vaccines protected monkeys exposed to the viruses, which periodically infect people in Africa and cause hemorrhagic fevers marked...

Is eyeless sea creature fishing with a red light?(Bioluminescence of deep sea fishes)(Brief Article)
July 16, 2005... Scientists working in waters off California have captured deep-sea jellyfish relatives waving little spikes that glow red. In the black ocean depths, plenty of creatures glow, but most of those that had been examined shine in blues and...

Hypnosis subdues the visual brain.(NEUROSCIENCE)
July 16, 2005... A new brain-scan investigation indicates that one type of hypnotic suggestion may literally change the way people see the world. A group led by Amir Raz of Columbia University studied 16 adults, ages 20 to 35. The researchers used a test in...

Wiring up molecules.(sensor wires)(Brief Article)
July 16, 2005... Researchers in Illinois have devised a new type of microscopic wire that they say will accelerate the development of sensors, circuit components, and other devices made from single molecules. What make the wire so versatile are gaps as small as...

Polio: An American Story: The Crusade that Mobilized the Nation against the 20th Century's Most Feared Disease.(book by David M. Oshinsky)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 16, 2005... POLIO: AN AMERICAN STORY: The Crusade that Mobilized the Nation against the 20th Century's Most Feared Disease DAVID M. OSHINSKY The polio epidemic of the 1950s filled the nation with dread. Americans tried to sanitize their homes and hands...

A Safe and Sustainable World: The Promise of Ecological Design.(book by Nancy Jack Todd)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 16, 2005... A SAFE AND SUSTAINABLE WORLD: The Promise of Ecological Design NANCY JACK TODD This is the story of the New Alchemy Institute, a pioneering, countercultural, environmental compound founded on Cape Cod in the late 1960s. The institute...

Stargazer: The Life and Times of the Telescope.(book by Fred Watson)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 16, 2005... STARGAZER: The Life and Times of the Telescope FRED WATSON The exact origins of the telescope are lost to history. Some evidence hints that the Roman conquerors of Britain possessed telescopes in 43 A.D. More-certain records show that while...

Madame Bovary's Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at Literature.(book by David P. Barash and Nanelle R. Barash)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
July 16, 2005... MADAME BOVARY'S OVARIES: A Darwinian Look at Literature DAVID R BARASH AND NANELLE R. BARASH What can the works of John Steinbeck, William Shakespeare, and Jane Austen tell us about human biology and evolution? A lot, according to authors...

Muddy, clarified.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 16, 2005... "Muddy Waters" (SN: 5/21/05, p. 328), on the deleterious effect of dams on coastal systems, contains a major conceptual error. It states that "another important cause of the ground sinking is the waning of sediment deposition by the Mississippi...

Meat-eating caterpillar: it hunts snails and ties them down.(This Week)(Hyposmocoma molluscivora)
July 23, 2005... A newly named species of Hawaiian caterpillar sneaks up on a resting snail and quickly spins silk strands around it, lashing it to the spot. The caterpillar then reaches into the snail shell's opening and has lunch. These larvae of a small...

Bacterial snitch: species competes by telling on another.(bacterial infections )
July 23, 2005... A bacterial species that typically colonizes people's noses may win out over another bacterium by tattling to the human immune system, a new study suggests. Both Haemophilus influenzae and Streptococcus pneumoniae can establish residence...

Under pressure: high-stress tests show surprising change in a mantle mineral's behavior.(This Week)
July 23, 2005... Some people toughen under increased pressure. Some rocks do too. Squeezing a common, iron-bearing mineral at the hellish pressures deep within our planet makes the material much stiffer than geophysicists had expected. This response may explain...

Tapping tiny pores: nanovalves control chemical releases.(This Week)
July 23, 2005... Cells readily manufacture the nanoscale valves, pumps, and other gadgets that make life work. For human researchers, fabricating devices in the nanometer range is anything but easy. That didn't stop chemists Thoi D. Nguyen and his...

Crater shake: tremors erased asteroid's topography.(This Week)
July 23, 2005... The equivalent of a gigantic shiver might have reduced the number of small craters found on the surface of the asteroid Eros. Astronomers analyzing the asteroid's surprisingly smooth complexion say that seismic shock waves from a large meteor...

Reflections of primate minds: mirror images strike monkeys as special.(This Week)
July 23, 2005... When a capuchin monkey looks at its own image in a mirror, something strange happens. The diminutive creature reacts not as if it sees a stranger, as many researchers had assumed. Instead, the reflection gets treated as a special phenomenon,...

Tumors in touch: cancer cells spur vessel formation through contact.(This Week)
July 23, 2005... Some tumor cells use a newfound mechanism to communicate with healthy cells next to them and prompt those neighbors into forming blood vessels. That discovery points a novel way toward drug treatments that could starve tumors of their...

Toxic surfs: homing in on an alga's threat--and therapeutic promise.(red tides health disorders)(Cover Story)
July 23, 2005... On a warm, sunny day, you can hear the presence of a "red tide" of toxic algae on popular Florida beaches, says Barbara Kirkpatrick. It's not the roar of coastal waves or the gurgle of flowing water, she explains, but "one continuous cough," as...

Mommy greenest: evidence grows for parental care in plants.(plant evolution and natural selection )
July 23, 2005... Plants generally come across as the "good-luck-and-good-bye" type of mothers. They're great at making baby clothes, wrapping their seeds in sophisticated coatings that keep away pests but let in spring rains. Plants also typically pack a good...

Core mystery.(supernova explosions reveal inforamation about neutron stars)(Brief Article)
July 23, 2005... In 1987, a supernova visible to the naked eye erupted in the nearby Magellanic Cloud galaxy. Astronomers hadn't witnessed such a brilliant stellar explosion since 1604. Known as supernova 1987A, the explosion remains the brightest known...

People fired up Aussie extinctions.(Australia massive fires had led to animal species extinction)(Brief Article)
July 23, 2005... Early human colonists of Australia apparently lit massive fires that reshaped the continent's landscape nearly 50,000 years ago and drove many animal species to extinction, according to new chemical analyses of ancient emu eggs and wombat...

Soy-protein quality versus quantity.(AGRICULTURE)(Brief Article)
July 23, 2005... Soybeans contain growth-promoting and heart-protecting proteins. To boost these benefits, the United Soybean Board, an industry group based in Chesterfield, Mo., has been pushing growers to develop soy with even higher protein yields. A new...