Science News articles from June 2005

Science News archives from June 2005

Gender measure: pollutant appears to alter boys' genitals.(This Week)
June 4, 2005... Infant boys who were exposed in the womb to modest concentrations of certain common plasticizers and solvents developed genital changes including smaller-than-normal penises, a new study finds. The results from this study of 85 boys are...

Anemone wars: clone armies deploy scouts, attack tidally.(This Week)
June 4, 2005... The first description of clashing armies of sea anemones has revealed unsuspected military tactics. "Sea anemone fights are amazing," says David Ayre of the University of Wollongong in Australia. Although anemones move in slow motion, a...

High anxiety: sudden solar flare highlights space risks.(This Week)
June 4, 2005... Measurements of energetic particles from an unusually strong solar flare that pummeled Earth early this year suggest that astronauts traveling or working in space might sometimes need to reach shelter within minutes of a warning. The Jan....

Investing on a whiff: chemical spray shows power as trust booster.(This Week)
June 4, 2005... Some people smell fear in potential business partners. Others smell a rat. But individuals who smell a certain brain hormone become unusually trusting of others in financial transactions, according to a new report. Men who inhale a nasal...

Decoding garlic's pizzazz: extract stimulates taste, temperature receptors.(This Week)
June 4, 2005... Despite garlic's widespread role in cooking--and in vampire tales--scientists had long failed to explain the pungent plant's burning taste. Now, a study of gustatory physiology suggests that raw garlic's characteristic spiciness stems from its...

Smart trap: nanosensor tracks major brain chemical.(This Week)(glutamate neurotransmitter optical sensor)
June 4, 2005... The study of neurological diseases and brain functions could become much more precise with the invention of an optical sensor that can closely monitor a specific chemical amidst the brain's complex neurochemical brew. Called glutamate,...

Vaccine gains: shot protects seniors from shingles flare-ups.(This Week)
June 4, 2005... A new vaccine has prevented half the cases of shingles in elderly people participating in a trial. When the painful disease did appear, it was generally less severe and cleared up faster than it did in study participants who got an inert shot....

Empty nets: fisheries may be crippling themselves by targeting the big ones.(Cover Story)
June 4, 2005... In the 1850s, 43 schooners from a single port, Beverly, Mass., plied the North Atlantic's Scotian shelf, which is prime cod territory in Canadian waters. Over the sides of the ships, crews dropped lines with single hooks and doggedly jigged...

Morphing memory: superfast atom shuffling inspires data-storage alternatives.
June 4, 2005... Anyone who purchases an electronic camera, cell phone, voice recorder, travel disk, or PDA, typically brings home a stick, card, or some other medium containing a chip ready to store information via a technology known as flash memory. Last...

Craft show.(ASTRONOMY)(Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft observations)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2005... The Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which has orbited the Red Planet since 1997, has captured images of two other emissaries from Earth. Images of the European Space Agency's Mars Express and NASA's Mars Odyssey mark the first time that a...

Built-in bird perch spreads the pollen.(BIOLOGY)(Babiana ringens works as pollinator perch)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2005... In a twist on seduction in the vegetable world, one South African plant grows a flowerless spear that lets avian pollinators perch within beak shot of the plant's flowers. Naturalists proposed decades ago that this spear of the South...

Inflammation inhibitor may limit heart attacks.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2005... Last year, scientists reported that a person's risk of a heart attack is doubled if he or she produces a particular version of FLAP, known more technically as 5-lipoxygenase activating protein. A troublesome variant of this protein boosts...

Carnivore conflicts gnaw at Neandertals.(ANTHROPOLOGY)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2005... Neandertals came into close, perhaps deadly, contact with hyenas that hunted or scavenged the same prey as they did, a new study suggests. Neandertals and hyenas competed for prey and for protected spots to consume food, Erik Trinkaus of...

Mars Polar Lander: lost but now found?(PLANETARY SCIENCE)(Space probe investigations)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2005... Minutes before the Mars Polar Lander was expected to touch down on the Red Planet on Dee. 3, 1999, NASA lost contact with the spacecraft (SN: 3/4/00, p. 159). Now, researchers think that they have located the remains of the craft and its...

Menstrual cycle changes the brain.(BIOMEDICINE)(estrogen induced health disorders)(Brief Article)
June 4, 2005... Hormone fluctuations over the course of a woman's menstrual cycle change the abundance of a particular type of receptor on the surface of nerve cells, say scientists. The finding may explain why some women with neurological disorders experience...

Chemical analysis deciphers biblical palette.(CHEMISTRY)(Gutenberg Bible illumination analysis )(Brief Article)
June 4, 2005... Many copies of the famous Gutenberg Bible, printed in the 1450s, have decorative illuminations that artists added to the margins of pages. Researchers have now identified for the first time the various paint pigments that individual artists...

The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 4, 2005... LARRY GONICK AND CRAIG CRIDDLE This is the latest in a long series of illustrated history and science books by cartoonist Gonick. He and Criddle, a Stanford University science professor, use humorous illustrations to explain the history of...

Identify Yourself: The 50 Most Common Birding Identification Challenges.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 4, 2005... BILL THOMPSON III ET AL. Beginning bird-watchers can be easily tricked: Many common bird species resemble one another. The novice who spies a lesser scaup and a ring-necked duck, for instance, can be left scratching his or her head and...

The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 4, 2005... DONALD KROODSMA Why do birds sing? Well, mostly to attract females--the crooners are usually male. The choir may be all of one sex, but the repertoire of each member varies greatly. Furthermore, each species has its own songs, and some...

Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 4, 2005... DIANA PRESTON As the 60th anniversary of the detonation of the first atomic bomb approaches, historian Preston traces the scientific and political history of atomic energy. Starting with the discoveries of X rays by Wilhelm Roentgen and of...

Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 4, 2005... TIM GALLAGHER On April 26, 2005, the field of ornithology was rocked by an incredible announce rediscovered in a swampy forest of Arkansas. In this thrilling narrative, Gallagher, one of the key players in the bird's rediscovery, documents...

Stem winder.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
June 4, 2005... "Full Stem Ahead" (SN: 4/2/05, p. 218) showed several reasons why stem cell research is a good thing: Stem cells from embryos might cure cancer, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, and many other diseases. But the article should...

Race results.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
June 4, 2005... "Code of Many Colors: Can researchers see race in the genome?" (SN: 4/9/05, p. 232) gives a simplistic and generally inaccurate account of the relationship between Fst [also called Wright's F statistic] and race/subspecies/species. Fst reflects...

Blues zinger.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
June 4, 2005... Research results on the physiological effects of blue light 1.5 hours before bedtime ("Blue light keeps night owls going," SN: 4/16/05, p. 253) makes me wonder about the effects on sleep and, subsequently, mood and metabolism for the millions...

Cancer link: microRNA grabs the spotlight.(This Week)
June 11, 2005... A type of genetic molecule barely on the radar screen of scientists a decade ago has emerged as a major player in cancer biology. Known as microRNA because they consist of short strands of ribonucleic acid (RNA), these molecules can team with a...

Sponge moms: dolphins learn tool use from their mothers.(This Week)
June 11, 2005... Bottlenose dolphins that carry sea sponges on their beaks probably learned the trick from their moms rather than inheriting a sponge-shuttling gene, researchers say. The sponges appear to protect the dolphins' beaks during foraging along...

Disorderly conduct: U.S. survey finds high rates of mental illness.(This Week)
June 11, 2005... About one in four people develops at least one mental disorder in any given year, and nearly one in two people does so at some time in their lives. Most of the cases are mild, however, and don't require treatment. Those are some of the findings...

Peering into a disrupted stellar nursery.(This Week)(Eta Carina nebula observations)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2005... In this new infrared portrait of a nearby star-forming region, fierce winds and harsh ultraviolet light from massive stars have shredded a dusty cocoon, exposing baby stars, each at the tip of one of the cocoon's remnants. Arrow points to one...

Back to genetics: DNA variant may code for lumbar pain.(This Week)(genetic variation increases Lumbar-disk disease susceptibility)
June 11, 2005... It's now tempting to blame your aching back on Mom and Dad. Researchers have discovered an inheritable gene variation that may increase susceptibility to lumbar-disk disease, a common precursor of lower-back pain. The finding may lead to...

Icy heat: satellites look at heat flow through Antarctica's crust.(This Week)
June 11, 2005... using satellite observations of our planet's magnetic field in the region overlying Antarctica, scientists can now estimate the amount of heat flowing upward through Earth's surface under kilometers-thick ice. Zones of high heat flow often...

Micropower heats up: propane fuel cell packs a lot of punch.(This Week)(propane in fuel cells)
June 11, 2005... Portable electronics such as laptops and MP3 players could soon run on miniature fuel cells that consume propane, the same fuel used in gas barbecues. In search of longer-lasting alternatives to conventional batteries, a team of researchers has...

Farmers without fungus: how to store peanuts to reduce toxins.(This Week)
June 11, 2005... African peanut farmers can slash their exposure to a class of harmful fungal toxins by adopting several simple measures after the harvest, researchers have shown. In many developing countries, the carcinogenic contaminants called aflatoxins are...

Comeback bird: tales from the search for the ivory-billed woodpecker.(Cover Story)
June 11, 2005... During the last week of April, an e-mail zinging through the bird-watcher community spilled the beans on one of the biggest and best-kept secrets in ornithology. It proclaimed that North America's famed ivory-billed woodpecker was not extinct...

Faithful ancestors: researchers debate claims of monogamy for Lucy and her ancient kin.
June 11, 2005... A weird kind of creature strode across the eastern African landscape from around 4 million to 3 million years ago. Known today by the scientific label Australopithecus afarensis, these ancient ancestors of people may have taken the battle of...

Renegade moon.(PLANETARY SCIENCE)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2005... It came from outer space. Saturn's outlier moon Phoebe didn't coalesce from material near the ringed planet but instead was captured from the distant Kuiper belt, a reservoir of frozen bodies beyond Pluto. The Saturn-orbiting Cassini telescope...

World's fastest plant explodes with pollen.(BOTANY)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2005... The fastest flower in the west, or anywhere else, is a woodland wildflower of North America called bunchberry dogwood, says a research team with a really fast camera. A bunchberry dogwood (Cornus canadensis) bears flowers much like those...

Obesity and insulin resistance age cells.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2005... A person who is overweight and has reduced sensitivity to the hormone insulin may be aging prematurely, according to new research. Such people develop diseases associated with aging, such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease, earlier than...

A hurricane can dump a lot of rain ...(EARTH SCIENCE)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2005... The large masses of warm, moist air that fuel hurricanes also prime those windstorms to drop a lot of precipitation in a short time, a phenomenon that residents of Puerto Rico experienced in spades when Hurricane Georges struck their island in...

... and churn up big waves, too.(OCEANOGRAPHY)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2005... As Hurricane Ivan approached the U.S. Gulf Coast last September, it passed right over an array of seafloor sensors. The network detected the largest wave ever measured by instruments--one that towered more than 27 meters from trough to crest....

Tracking down an emerging disease.(INFECTIOUS DISEASES)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2005... By examining geographic patterns of outbreaks of a disfiguring skin disease in tropical nations, scientists are finding tentative clues about how the ailment spreads. Known as Buruli ulcer, the disease is caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans,...

Seismic noise can yield maps of Earth's crust.(SEISMOLOGY)(Brief Article)
June 11, 2005... One way in which researchers can garner clues about Earth's inner structure is to analyze intense ground motions from earthquakes or test explosions. Now, scientists are realizing that the small, random, and nearly constant seismic waves that...

How to Be a BAD Birdcatcher.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 11, 2005... HOW TO BE A BAD BIRDWATCHER SIMON BARNES In this irreverent book, Barnes reveals the hidden joys of being a bad bird-watcher. Most of us can be bad bird-watchers without his coaching. With a good dose of wry humor, however, the author...

The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind is Designed to Kill.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 11, 2005... THE MURDERER NEXT DOOR: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill DAVID M. BUSS While serial killers such as John Wayne Gacy and Charles Manson rule the headlines, they account for only 1 percent of all murders committed. The majority of...

The Language of Life: How Cells Communicate in Health and Disease.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 11, 2005... THE LANGUAGE OF LIFE: How Cells Communicate in Health and Disease DEBRA NIEHOFF Cells within a human body function much as the ideal human society does, each member working for the survival of the whole. The key to this harmony is...

Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 11, 2005... READING THE ROCKS: The Autobiography of the Earth MARCIA BJORNERUD Earth keeps a "stone diary," explains geologist Bjornerud. That is, Earth has kept for 4 billion years a record of its changes and its inhabitants' changes, all stored...

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 11, 2005... AMERICAN PROMETHEUS: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer KAI BIRD AND MARTIN J. SHERWIN Authors Bird and Sherwin spent 25 years poring through thousands of letters and records--including massive FBI files--and conducting...

Dim prospects.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
June 11, 2005... To a layman like me, it seems almost impossible that light reflected from a body that lies "much farther from the star than Pluto does from the sun" could be seen from Earth at a distance of 450 light years, when Pluto, only 6 light hours away,...

Why autism?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
June 11, 2005... In "Blood hints at autism's source" (SN: 4/16/05, p. 254), researcher S. Jill James implicates low glutathione and heavy metal exposure in autism. This maybe the case, but glutathione has a number of important functions that have nothing to do...

Planet hunt strikes rock; hot kin of Earth orbits nearby star.(SCIENCE NEWS: This Week)
June 18, 2005... Moving closer to the goal of finding a planet just like home, astronomers this week announced their discovery of the closest known cousin to Earth--a solid world just 15 light-years beyond the solar system. With its surface temperature hot...

Preventing PMS: vitamin and mineral let women avoid syndrome.(SCIENCE NEWS: This Week)(premenstrual syndrome)
June 18, 2005... Ample calcium and vitamin O in the diet prevent premenstrual syndrome in some women, a new study suggests. Each month, as menstruation approaches and begins, most women experience at least mild symptoms such as depression, irritability,...

Ancient glassmakers: Egyptians crafted ingots for Mediterranean trade.(SCIENCE NEWS: This Week)
June 18, 2005... When pharaohs ruled Egypt, high-status groups around the Mediterranean exchanged fancy glass items to cement political alliances. New archaeological finds indicate that by about 3,250 years ago, Egypt had become a major glass producer and was...

Smoking's reward: nicotine triggers opiate-pleasure response.(SCIENCE NEWS: This Week)(cyclic AMP-response element binding protein)
June 18, 2005... For any smoker trying to quit, tobacco's addictive nature is abundantly clear. However, the mechanism behind the leaf's habit-forming properties has been hazy. Now, a study of mouse brains suggests that nicotine, the chemical considered the...

No sugar babies: study suggests treating gestational diabetes.(SCIENCE NEWS: This Week)
June 18, 2005... Diabetes that strikes during pregnancy can lead to overweight fetuses and difficult deliveries. In the United States, most women who develop gestational diabetes, a temporary form of the disease, are told to limit caloric intake and to monitor...

Using one's head.(SCIENCE NEWS: This Week)(porters of Nepal carry huge weights on head)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2005... Nepalese porters are the most efficient human load carriers yet recorded, They beat the former champions, African women balancing burdens on their heads, says Norman Heglund of the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. He and his...

Wetland blanket: volcanic sulfates may curb methane emission.(SCIENCE NEWS: This Week)
June 18, 2005... Sulfates that form in the atmosphere after volcanic eruptions and rain down on wetlands may decrease those areas' emissions of methane for several years, thereby cooling the global climate. The effect, now documented in a field study, could...

Whisking whiskers: nanobrushes sweep up.(SCIENCE NEWS: This Week)
June 18, 2005... Scientists have finally gotten a handle on carbon nanotubes. By controlling where those tiny hollow fibers of carbon sprout up on ultrafine shafts of silicon carbide, the researchers have made brushes and brooms loaded with bristles and have...

Pieces of numbers: a proof brings closure to a dramatic tale of partitions and primes.(Partitions (Mathematics))
June 18, 2005... In the realm of mathematics, it's hard to imagine anything more basic than the counting numbers: 1, 2, 3, and so on. Yet this set of mathematical objects abounds with beautiful and unexpected patterns. For example, pick any number and double...

Striking a better bargain with HIV: new interventions needed to save infants and to spare mothers.(Cover Story)
June 18, 2005... During roughly every minute you spend reading this article, a mother somewhere in the world will pass on to her infant HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Damming this current of HIV transmission would be rather simple from a medical standpoint....

Climate shift shaped Aussie extinctions.(ANTHROPOLOGY)(extinct animal fossils reveals reshaped habitats to resist climate change)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2005... Stone Age people lived virtually side-by-side with now-extinct animals in western Australia for 6,000 years, a new study has revealed. The finding quashes the proposal by some anthropologists that ancient settlers rapidly hunted the...

Slick trick snags catalyst.(TECHNOLOGY)(teflon tape catalyst recovering properties)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2005... "We thought nothing sticks to Teflon," says chemist John A. Gladysz of the University of Erlangen in Germany. "Au contraire!" In an accidental discovery, his graduate student Long V. Dinh found that certain expensive chemical catalysts glom...

New treatment for extreme grief.(BEHAVIOR)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2005... Severe grief may be a unique mental disorder, according to a new psychiatric study. People who exhibit prolonged, debilitating grief after a loved one's death often improve markedly upon receiving a novel type of psychotherapy that focuses on...

Newfound dinosaur wasn't sticking its neck out.(PALEONTOLOGY)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2005... Sauropod dinosaurs, the group of herbivores that included the largest land animals that ever lived, are renowned for their incredibly long necks. Fossils of a newly discovered, 10-meter-long species excavated in South America, however, suggest...

Andromeda gets bigger.(GALACTIC STUDIES)(Andromeda galaxy expanding )(Brief Article)
June 18, 2005... Visible even to the naked eye, the starlit, spiral disk of the Andromeda galaxy stretches across a patch of sky as wide as the full moon. A new investigation of Earth's next-door-neighbor galaxy reveals that it looms even larger. Using a...

The supernova that wasn't.(STELLAR ASTROPHYSICS)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2005... In 1954, astronomers witnessed the brilliant outburst of a star in a nearby galaxy. The discoverers dubbed the object Variable 12, but for decades it remained unclear whether the star had survived the eruption. Many researchers concluded that...

Meetings.(Calendar)
June 18, 2005... American Astronomical Society, Minneapolis, Minn., May 30-June 2

Making waves.(BINARY STARS observations)(Brief Article)
June 18, 2005... Locked in a deadly embrace, two white dwarf stars may be the strongest source of gravitational waves now flooding our galaxy. The stars appear to be separated by just one-fifth the Earth-moon distance. New X-ray observations of the duo,...

The Grand Tour: A Traveler's Guide to the Solar System.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Ron Miller and William K. Hartmann)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 18, 2005... THE GRAND TOUR: A Travele's Guide to the Solar System RON MILLER AND WILLIAM K. HARTMANN In this revised edition replete with gorgeous illustrations, Miller and Hartmann offer a guided tour of the solar system and of some of space beyond....

Annus Mirabilis: 1905, Albert Einstein, and the Theory of Relativity.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Mary Gribbin and John Gribbin)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 18, 2005... ANNUS MIRABIMS: 1905, Albert Einstein, and the Theory of Relativity MARY GRIBBIN AND JOHN GRIBBIN By 1905, Albert Einstein had given up on university life, failed at teaching, and taken a job as a junior patent clerk to feed his wife and...

109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Jennet Conant)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 18, 2005... 109 EAST PALACE: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos JENNET CONANT Early in the 1940s, an odd little community sprang up in Los Alamos, NM. The inhabitants would call the place Lost Almost and sometimes regard it as a...

Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, The Masterpiece Science Edition.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Albert Einstein, Roger Penrose, Robert Geroch, David C. Cassidy)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 18, 2005... RELATIVITY: The Special and the General Theory, The Masterpiece Science Edition ALBERT EINSTEIN, ROGER PENROSE, ROBERT GEROCH, AND DAVID C. CASSIDY This reprinting, with commentary, of Einstein's 1916 book on relativity is just in time for...

Infinite Worlds: An Illustrated Voyage to Planets beyond Our Sun.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(book by Ray Villard and Lynette R. Cook)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 18, 2005... INFINITE WORLDS: An Illustrated Voyage to Planets beyond Our Sun RAY VILLARD AND LYNETTE R. COOK A mere 10 years ago, planets outside our own solar system were unknown. But since then, astronomers have identified more than 140 extrasolar...

Road worriers.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
June 18, 2005... "Navigating Celestial Currents: Math leads spacecraft on joy rides through the solar system" (SN: 4/16/05, p. 250) gives the casual reader the distorted view that one could travel the solar system at will by using these methods. These are...

Bright ideas.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
June 18, 2005... In "Mood Brighteners: Light therapy gets nod as depression buster" (SN: 4/2,3/05, p. 261), the use of light therapy was shown to fight depression. I would suggest consideration of the possibility that the light therapy also increased the levels...

What a gas.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
June 18, 2005... It seems that one of the intriguing potential beneficial applications of hydrogen sulfide-induced torpor ("Frozen in Time: Gas puts mice metabolically on ice" SN: 4/23/05, p. 261) would emerge if it turns out that cancer cells are less...

Killer bite: Ancient, tiny mammal probably used venom.(SCIENCE NEWS: This Week)
June 25, 2005... Recently excavated fossils of a mammal species originally described decades ago suggest that the mouse-size creature had a venomous bite, a trait previously unreported in ancient mammals. Paleontologists first unearthed remains of...

Dee for danger: Chickadees add notes as threat grows.(SCIENCE NEWS: This Week)
June 25, 2005... Biologists report new progress in translating the sophisticated communication system of black-capped chickadees. When the little birds spot a lurking predator, they burst out with variations on their "chickadee" calls. Tests with 15...

Attack on elephantiasis. Antibiotic offers weapon against tropical scourge.(SCIENCE NEWS: This Week)
June 25, 2005... Of all the exotic diseases that afflict people, elephantiasis ranks among the most dreaded. The threadlike, parasitic worm that causes this lethal disease makes nests in a person's lymph system. The result is fever, skin lesions, and swelling...

Making a muscle: engineered fibers grow in the lab and in mice.(SCIENCE NEWS: This Week)
June 25, 2005... In a first for tissue engineering, scientists have created slivers of muscle that produce their own network of blood vessels. The accomplishment may provide insights for generating more-complex tissues, such as those that make up hearts and...

Grow in the dark: Bottom-dwelling bacterium survives on geothermal glow.
June 25, 2005... A microbe discovered in the deepest, darkest reaches of the Pacific Ocean makes its living in an unlikely way--by photo-synthesis. The newly described species, announced in the June 28 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses feint...

Personable brain cells: Neurons as virtuosos of face, object recognition.
June 25, 2005... Give the humble neuron its due. Although neuroscientists often view single nerve cells as bit players in mental life, new evidence indicates that some star on their own in recognizing specific people or objects. Far from working as simple...

Lube tune-up: Motor oil from recycled plastic could improve automotive-fuel efficiency.
June 25, 2005... Every year, the United States generates 25 million tons of plastic waste, but only about 1 million tons of it gets recycled. To make better use of this vast waste stream, chemists at Chevron and the University of Kentucky in Lexington have...

A matter of time: Should most hospitals send away heart attack patients?(emergency angioplasty )
June 25, 2005... When a heart attack strikes, cardiologist William O'Neill wants to see the patient quickly. But it doesn't always work out that way. Once, for instance, a man whom O'Neill had previously treated was transported to a hospital in a different...

Energy on ice: A vast, untapped source of natural gas comes in from the cold.
June 25, 2005... In March 2002, an international team of scientists pumped hot water down a 1,200-meter well located at the edge of the Mackenzie River Delta in northwestern Canada. The water seeped into the pores of the perpetually frozen sediments, melting...

Opportunity rolls out of Purgatory,.(Mars rover frees itself from sand trap)(Brief Article)
June 25, 2005... After being stuck for nearly 5 weeks, the Mars rover Opportunity has freed itself from a sand trap dubbed Purgatory Dune. All six wheels of the rover had been mired up to their rims in soft sand since the vehicle drove into the small dune on...