Science News articles from July 2008

Science News archives from July 2008

McCain and Obama: read this magazine.(FROM THE EDITOR)(John McCain and Barack Obama)
July 5, 2008... It has probably not escaped your attention that 2008 is a presidential election year in the United States, as usually happens in leap years (and even some non-leap years, like 1900). Among the issues facing the nation that the candidates should...

Scientific observations.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Human Genome Project )(Brief article)
July 5, 2008... "We decided that every 24 hours the data that came out of the sequencing instruments for the Human Genome Project would be placed in a public database where anybody could see it.... There would be no intellectual property, no subscription fees,...

Science past: 50 years ago: from Science News Letter, July 5, 1958.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
July 5, 2008... DEVICE PAGES DOCTORS--A pocket radio that whistles to let you know somebody is trying to reach you by telephone is part of a page-you-anywhere telephone system undergoing tests in the Allentown-Bethlehem, Pa., area. Doctors, lawyers and other...

Science future.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)(Calendar)
July 5, 2008... July 9-10 New Energy Symposium in New York. Visit www.neny.org/ nes/2008/home July 22-25 Smithsonian's Franzini Family Science Circus explores gravity, inertia and balance with hula hoops and balls. Visit discoverytheater.org ...

The (-est).(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
July 5, 2008... Spin spin. A British amateur astronomer has discovered the fastest rotating natural object known in our solar system. The near-Earth asteroid, dubbed 2008 HJ, spins once every 42.7 seconds. This may not sound like a dizzying rate, but the...

Science & the public.(SN online: www.sciencenews.org)(Excerpt)(Brief article)
July 5, 2008... Janet Raloff, Science News' blogger, reports from far and wide (actually, most recently from Pittsburgh) on topics far and wide. A few condensed excerpts: June 11: Over the past week, a fear of tomatoes has stricken the nation's salad...

Every breath you make tells of all your aches: scientists look at exhaled compounds to diagnose ills.(STORY ONE)
July 5, 2008... Scientists would like to take your breath away. Literally. Exhaled vapor holds clues to your health, revealing much more than what you ate for lunch. In recent years, researchers have been scrutinizing the misty mixture of molecules with...

Astronomers find distant star with a whole set of superEarths: total count of extrasolar planets now exceeds 300.(Atoms & Cosmos)
July 5, 2008... Astronomers have discovered the first known planetary system around a distant star with three orbs categorized as superEarths. The three extrasolar planets, all presumably rocky, range in mass from 4.2 to 9.4 times that of Earth. They orbit a...

Enter the plutoids.(Atoms & Cosmos)(Brief article)
July 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Pluto and Eris are the first two members of a new class of objects called plutoids. The International Astronomical Union announced June 11 that the name plutoid will apply to any dwarf planet that orbits the sun...

Acrobatic skill had a downside: headless skeletons tell story of ancient sacrifice.(Humans)
July 5, 2008... Sometimes it's just good fortune to find a headless acrobat's skeleton sprawled on the floor near the remains of two other people, several mules and an array of valuable metal objects. That, at least, is the opinion of archaeologists who have...

Footprints in ash date humans in Americas.(Humans)(Brief article)
July 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Footprints left in volcanic ash (now rock) that fell in central Mexico's Valsequillo Basin about 40,000 years ago suggest that humans have inhabited the Americas far longer than previously confirmed. New analyses of...

Good news for coffeeholics: 2 to 3 cups daily drops death rate among women.(Body & Brain)
July 5, 2008... Go ahead, have that extra cup of coffee. Coffee drinkers die at about the same rates as their non-drinking peers, a large epidemiological study shows. But, after controlling for the fact that coffee drinkers tend to exercise less and smoke...

Acid test for cancer.(Brief article)
July 5, 2008... Using MRI to "see" a change in tissue acidity could help doctors catch hard-to-find, small tumors earlier, scientists reported in the June 12 Nature. "Low pH is associated with many disease states, not just cancer, so the potential for this...

Sunny days, happy hearts.(Brief article)
July 5, 2008... A 10-year study of more than 18,000 men shows that vitamin D can lessen heart-attack risk. Men with the lowest blood levels of vitamin D were twice as likely to have a heart attack as men with the highest, says lead author Edward Giovannucci of...

New method for birth control.(Brief article)
July 5, 2008... Customized RNA molecules can prevent mouse cells from making a protein coating that envelops egg cells, a coating sperm need to fertilize the egg. The technique, reported June 11 in San Francisco at the Beyond Genome conference, exploits RNA...

As ozone hole heals, Antarctic could heat up: models suggest changes in wind, weather patterns.(Earth)
July 5, 2008... Via a complicated cascade of effects, a full recovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica in the coming years could significantly boost warming of the atmosphere over and around the icy continent. After years of decline, the springtime...

Trees avoid Goldilocks' troubles: leaves sweat, huddle to keep temperatures favorable.(Earth)(Brief article)
July 5, 2008... Tree leaves achieve temperatures just right for photosynthesis, even in environments that are too hot or too cold. From roughly the top to the bottom of North America, across some 50 degrees of latitude, trees do their photosynthesizing at...

Andes rose rather rapidly: analyses of sediments suggest new scenario explaining South American mountains' height.(Earth)
July 5, 2008... South America's Andes reached their staggering heights after a sudden growth spurt millions of years ago, new evidence suggests. The central part of the Andes, one of the world's longest and tallest mountain chains, is home to some of the...

Surprise found in comet dust: odd mineral offers clues to solar system's origins.(Earth)(Brief article)
July 5, 2008... Researchers have found a new mineral within an interplanetary dust particle. The substance--a manganese silicide named Brownleeite--appears to have come from comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup, NASA announced June 12. Originally seen in 1902, the...

Skirting the membrane dilemma: early cells may not have needed sophisticated proteins.(Life)
July 5, 2008... Long before chickens or eggs, life had to solve a difficult chicken-and-egg problem. The first cells to arise on the primordial Earth needed nutrients from their surroundings in order to grow and reproduce long enough to evolve complex...

A mammoth divide.(Life)(Brief article)
July 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Woolly mammoths, who lived during the last ice age, once roamed what is now Siberia. And they may have done so in two distinct clans that went extinct at two different times. "It's pretty standard dogma in mammoth...

Monkeys trade chips like food: study shows capuchins use symbolic reasoning.(Life)
July 5, 2008... Don't write off capuchin monkeys as simpleminded. It turns out that they're symbol-minded, wielding a mental capacity often regarded as unique to people, researchers say. Capuchins given laboratory training treat arbitrary tokens as...

One of the 2,000-year-old seeds (left) identifies as the date palm Phoenix dactylifera L. was recently planted.(Life)(Photograph)
July 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Caption: One of the 2,000-year-old seeds (left) identifies as the date palm Phoenix dactylifera L. was recently planted by a team of botanists led by Sarah Sallon of the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem. It...

Biblical tree brought back to life: date palm seed recovered from Masada germinates.(Life)(Brief article)
July 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Five date pits were found in the 1960s in the Dead Sea region of Israel at Masada--a Herodean palace and later a last stronghold of Jews under siege in the first century A.D. In 2005, one of the seeds was planted,...

Extrasolar: three new projects aim to capture a first: an image of a planet orbiting a star outside the solar system.(Cover story)
July 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the 13 years since the first discovery of a planet orbiting a sunlike star outside our solar system, astronomers have found about 300 such "extrasolar" planets, but still have no pictures of ally of them. ...

Simpleminded voters: informed citizens avoid information overload by taking strategic shortcuts before casting their ballots.
July 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As the 2008 U.S. presidential election approaches, tens of millions of voters have to make up their minds. They face the task of sifting through media reports, televised debates, political advertisements, campaign...

Forest invades tundra ... and the new tenants could aggravate global warming.
July 5, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For the Arctic, green is the new black. People frequently say "green" to mean "environmentally friendly." But encroaching conifer forests--really big greens--threaten to further spike the far North's already...

Get the real life.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
July 5, 2008... In the article "Scientists get a second life" (SN: 5/24/08, p. 20), I take exception to Joanna Scott's statement that "Second Life is real life." In fairness, one could debate what she means by "life," but the statement is just too strong to...

Asking the right questions.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
July 5, 2008... Thank you for the quotes from the late John Wheeler ("Quantum theory poses reality's deepest mystery," SN: 5/24/08, p. 32). A more famous but fictional Dane may have put the Danish physicist Niels Bohr's "To be" phrase quite differently: "To...

Weak interaction with Earth.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
July 5, 2008... There may be another way of proving the existence of WIMPs ("Battle over WIMPs goes another round" SN: 5/10/08, p. 12). Is it possible that Earth's interaction with this wind of particles could slow Earth down, however slightly? If this is so,...

Wrong place to ponder being.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
July 5, 2008... Your new format is very pleasant to read. Thanks. However, the segment "Scientific Observations" (SN: 5/10/08 p. 4) was a great disappointment. Douglas Hofstadter's constructivist view of reality is unfounded. Indeed, if it were true then his...

Young scientists.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
July 5, 2008... I see that the top three finalists at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (SN: 6/7/08, p. 13) were girls, and girls won two other top prizes. Who was the erstwhile Harvard president who said women just don't have the smarts men...

Headless animals easier to eat.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
July 5, 2008... In the article "Insects: The original white meat," (SN: 6/7/08, p. 16), some researchers wonder why people find the idea of eating bugs so revolting when we freely consume other arthropods such as shrimp and lobster. When I eat the flesh...

Thoughts on the new Science News.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
July 5, 2008... The new magazine is Slicker and Thicker--but no longer Quicker--than the morning commute!! A tremendous loss of its finest feature. NORMAN MACRITCHIE, HONOLULU, HAWAII I've been a subscriber for about 20 years, give or take a few....

Falling for Science: Objects in Mind.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 5, 2008... Falling for Science: Objects in Mind Sherry Turkle, editor [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As a child, Seymour Papert fell in love with gears. Papert, now considered a pioneer in artificial intelligence, describes this love in very...

Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect With Others.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 5, 2008... Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect With Others Marco Iacoboni [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] People cry when they watch sad movies or wince when they see athletes fall. This sense of shared experience is thought to be at...

Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 5, 2008... Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul Kenneth R. Miller [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A Brown University biology professor and opponent of intelligent design examines the threat to scientific understanding. ...

I'm Lucy: A Day in the Life of a Young Bonobo.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 5, 2008... I'm Lucy: A Day in the Life of a Young Bonobo Mathea Levine [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A baby bonobo named Lucy tells children just how similar she is to them. Blue Bark Press, 2008, 33 p., $19.95. www.bonobokids.org

Life in Cold Blood.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 5, 2008... Life in Cold Blood David Attenborough [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Learn about the emergence of amphibians and reptiles, and their risk of extinction. Princeton Univ. Press, 2008, 288 p., $29.95.

The Animal Research War.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 5, 2008... The Animal Research War P. Michael Conn and James V. Parker [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Authors explore how animal rights extremism has affected scientific advancement. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 174 p., $34.95.

A Field Guide to Poison Ivy, Poison Oak, and Poison Sumac: Prevention and Remedies.(Brief article)(Book review)
July 5, 2008... A Field Guide to Poison Ivy, Poison Oak, and Poison Sumac: Prevention and Remedies Susan Carol Hauser [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A pocket guide for learning about and avoiding noxious plants. FalconGuides/Globe Pequot Press, 2008,...

Strategies for nurturing science's next generation.(COMMENT)
July 5, 2008... "Woe be on woe..., frenzy of the mind distraught." Like the walling chorus in a Sophoclean tragedy, today's academic research scientists are constantly bemoaning their funding fate. No wonder--the NIH budget has declined in real dollars...

At the LHC, physics will collide with reality.(FROM THE EDITOR)(Large Hadron Collider)
July 19, 2008... In a couple of months or so, scientists will celebrate the beginning of a new era in physics when the Large Hadron Collider opens for business outside Geneva. The LHC will be the world's most powerful atom smasher, colliding protons at...

Scientific observations.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Quotation)(Brief article)
July 19, 2008... "We do not float above the biosphere in some higher spiritual or technoscientific plane. Life swarms around us, and even in us.... For many reasons, not least our own well-being, we need to take better care of the rest of life. Biodiversity......

Science past: 50 years ago: from Science News Letter, July 19, 1958.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)
July 19, 2008... RUSSIANS TEST ACCELERATOR--Russian scientists reported the first results of experiments with their atom-smasher, the world's largest, to the 1958 Annual International Conference on High Energy Physics in Geneva, Switzerland. Their studies...

Science future.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)(Calendar)
July 19, 2008... July 19 Randy Olson's new mockumentary Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy premieres in Hollywood. Visit www.sizzle themovie.com August 6-14 The 33rd International Geological Congress will be held in Oslo. Visit www.33igc.org October...

Comment.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Brief article)
July 19, 2008... Go online to find references from this issue's Comment author Dudley Herschbach, winner of the i986 Nobel Prize in chemistry, for his column (p. 32) discussing infusing liberal arts education with scientific ideas.

Math trek.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Brief article)
July 19, 2008... What's Edgar Allan Poe got to do with game theory? Inspired by a game theory "riddle" in Poe's short story "The Purloined Letter," economists Kfir Eliaz and Ariel Rubinstein ran dozens of simple, even-and-odd guessing games, similar to a game...

Diabetes on the upswing.(Science Stats)(Table)(Brief article)
July 19, 2008... DIABETES ON THE UPSWING Percent of people age 65 or older with diabetes by race in the United States 1984-1984 2001-2004 White 17% 24% Black 27% 28% Mexican...

How bizarre.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(movement research)(Brief article)
July 19, 2008... It's all in the hips. Or is it? University of Ottawa researchers decided the complex task of hula hooping needed more attention, so they set out to study the coordinated movements that keep the plastic ring from dropping down. Three...

Brazil's Piraha grasp numbers without words: study challenges theories linking language, thought.(STORY ONE)
July 19, 2008... One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do, especially if you don't even have a word for it. That's the situation of the Piraha people, denizens of Brazil's Amazon rainforest who have no term for the number one or for any other exact...

One-way gate mimics 'demon' to trap atoms: barrier could cool gases to very low temperatures.(Matter & Energy)
July 19, 2008... Like the entrance to hell in Dante's Inferno, this gate is one-way only. Physicists have created a laser barrier that lets atoms through only in one direction-mimicking the "demon," proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in a thought experiment, that...

Scientists find molecular key to paradoxical pain: study pinpoints trigger of burning by anesthetics.(Body & Brain)
July 19, 2008... 100... 98... 97... 96... 95... "Relax. Keep counting," the anesthesiologist says to the patient, who is having her hip surgically replaced. "You won't feel a thing." Though the woman can no longer feel the dull ache in her hip, she...

Testing for sound bones.(Brief article)
July 19, 2008... X-ray technology is the gold standard for measuring bone density, but cheaper ultrasound scans can provide useful density measurements, a new study in the July Radiology finds. Idris Guessous of Emory University in Atlanta and colleagues in...

Wishful thinking.(Brief article)
July 19, 2008... SAN FRANCISCO -- Guys who receive a shot that might or might not be growth hormone are more likely than women to believe it's the real thing, a new study finds. And men who got fake shots actually scored higher on a jumping test than they did...

Vessel rescue.(losartan may affect people with Marfan syndrome)(Brief article)
July 19, 2008... The drug losartan may prevent lethal damage to the aorta in people with a genetic disorder called Marfan syndrome, preliminary findings suggest. From 2003 to 2006, Johns Hopkins University researchers identified 18 children with severe Marfan...

Energy deficit interrupts periods: athletic girls face hormone imbalance from too few calories.(Body & Brain)
July 19, 2008... SAN FRANCISCO -- Roughly one-fourth of high school and college female athletes stop having periods at some point, far more than the 2 to 5 percent rate in women overall, surveys have shown. A new study reveals a hormone imbalance that might...

DNA packaging runs in families: epigenetic shifts also continue throughout life.(Body & Brain)
July 19, 2008... If you find yourself becoming more like your parents, don't blame it just on your genes. Epigenetics may be responsible too. Epigenetics refers to changes to DNA that don't alter the genes themselves but nudge their level of activity up or...

School teacher spots green blob: mystery object appears to be a starless dwarf galaxy.(Atom & Cosmos)
July 19, 2008... Within a few weeks, astronomers are expected to formally report the discovery of an intensely hot, green ring of gas. They'll make a Dutch primary school teacher an honorary coauthor to credit her for first drawing their attention to this...

Impact may have scarred Mars.(Atom & Cosmos)(Brief article)
July 19, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Mars has two faces: a northern hemisphere with smooth, low ground and a southern hemisphere with a high elevation and many craters. "It's one of the really striking things about the planet," says Steven Squyres of...

Lander hints at water, nutrients on Red Planet: Phoenix continues to dig and analyze soil samples.(Atom & Cosmos)
July 19, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The first analyses of Martian soil scooped up last month by the robotic arm on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander support the notion that liquid water has flowed on the Red Planet. A cubic centimeter of Martian...

Vanilla's genetic flavor is bland: low diversity suggests difficulty in fighting off pests.(Life)(Brief article)
July 19, 2008... Scientists have now tasted the genetic makeup of Vanilla, the orchid whose pods bestow flavor on ice cream, perfume and rum. And they found it's pretty plain. Genetic diversity in Vanilla planifolia is "very, very, verylow," says Pascale...

Environment drives fashion sense: lady damselflies aren't just mimicking the male color.(Life)(Brief article)
July 19, 2008... MINNEAPOLIS -- It's not the sexual harassment. It's the sunshine. That's Idelle Cooper's new take on the evolutionary force driving female Hawaiian damselflies to dress like males. The slim bodies of male Megalagrion calliphya damselflies shine...

Earthworms keep house: these ecosystem engineers collect and plant ragweed.(Life)
July 19, 2008... Unlike Richard Scarry's Lowly Worm, real worms don't drive cars or go to school. But the wriggly creatures appear to live a more purposeful life than previously thought. Earthworms deliberately gather and bury ragweed seeds from around their...

Chimp noises suit audience: females' sex sounds depend on eavesdroppers.(Life)(Brief article)
July 19, 2008... When a chimp has sex in the forest, will she make a sound? Depends in part on who's listening, literally, says a scientist who spent months recording chimp sex sounds in the wild. With lots of females within earshot, a female chimp...

Where funny faces come from: looking afraid once served a different purpose.(Humans)
July 19, 2008... Faces say so much that Google's Gmail includes more than 20 emoticons to make up for the personal touches e-mail lacks. [??] But those basic expressions, so important in conversation, didn't originate for communication's sake, psychologists...

Girls could give preschool boys learning boost: proportion of boys in the class doesn't affect girls.(Humans)(Brief article)
July 19, 2008... Here's some news preschool boys don't want to hear: Those who attend classes with a majority of girls receive an intellectual boost by the end of the school year. Conversely, preschool boys who attend majority-boy classes fall increasingly...

E (14 trillion electron-volts) = m (?) [c (close to the speed light).sup.2]: this fall, the massive Large Hadron Collider beneath France and Switzerland will switch on. Protons moving at almost the speed of light will collide with energies high enough, physicists hope, to solve matter's biggest mysteries.(Humans)(Cover story)
July 19, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The hammering has stopped, the whining of power tools has abated. Only the hum of electronic detectors reverberates through the cavernous, eight-story space below the Swiss-Franco border that is stuffed with 9,300...

Stranded: a whale of a mystery: scientists generally agree that sonar can trigger strandings of certain whales, but no one really knows what leads these deep divers to the beach.
July 19, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Off the eastern edge of Andros Island lies the Tongue of the Ocean, a hundred-mile, inky blue swathe of sea over the Great Bahama Canyon. Bounded on the south and east by the shallow sands of the Bahamas banks, the...

Sick and down: to fight off an infection or illness, the body shifts into a slow-down mode that mirrors some symptoms of depression. In fact, scientists now think the immune response itself may even cause the mood disorder.
July 19, 2008... When one of psychiatrist Andrew Miller's patients asked about receiving the best drug available for treating hepatitis C, Miller said: "No way." The patient--in his early 20s and accompanied by his morn to the appointment--had no job, few...

For the record.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
July 19, 2008... We read with interest your article on superatoms ("Small, but super," SN: 6/21/08, p. 14) and would like to add a note on the experimental discovery. In the mid-1970s the late Walter Knight decided to investigate small metallic particles with a...

Amnesia dreams.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
July 19, 2008... Having read of amnesia victims' inability to imagine a beach scene in "Thanks for the future memories" (SN: 6/21/08, p. 26), I wondered whether they have normal dreams involving scenes and story lines. It would seem that dreaming would be...

The Score: How the Quest for Sex Has Shaped the Modern Man.(SN BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
July 19, 2008... The Score: How the Quest for Sex Has Shaped the Modern Man Faye Flam [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "What makes a man?" Flam, a science writer who pens a sex column for The Philadelphia Inquirer, seeks a scientific answer to this...

The Tomb in Ancient Egypt.(SN BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
July 19, 2008... The Tomb in Ancient Egypt Aidan Dodson and Salima Ikram [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] An illustrated tour of Egyptian tombs recounts the history and culture of ancient burial rites. Thames & Hudson, 2008, 368 p., $50.

Flash Floods in Texas.(SN BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
July 19, 2008... Flash Floods in Texas Jonathan Burnett [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The book details the 28 historic deluges that have hit the Lone Star State since 1900, with plenty of black and white photographs. Texas A&M Univ. Press, 2008, 330...

Seeding liberal arts courses with science parables.(COMMENT)
July 19, 2008... As a graduate student, more than 50 years ago, I heard Isidor Rabi make a fervent appeal to cultivate common ground, shared by science and liberal arts. Ever since, in my own teaching, I've strived to do what he urged: "Scientists must learn to...