Science News articles from March 2002

Science News archives from March 2002

No olympian: analysis hints T. rex ran slowly, if at all. (This Week).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... Tyrannosaurus rex, a bipedal meat eater considered by many to be the most fearsome dinosaur of its day, may not have been the swift Jeep-chaser portrayed in Jurassic Park. Scientists figure that for a 6,000-kilogram adult T. rex to dash along...

Good grief: bereaved adjust well without airing emotion. (This Week).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... Mental-health workers have long theorized that it takes grueling emotional exertion to recover from the death of a loved one. So-called grief work, now the stock-in-trade of a growing number of grief counselors, entails confronting the reality...

Ambitious mission: hubble slated to get one heckuva tune-up. (This Week).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... If all goes according to plan next week, astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia will embark on the fourth and most technically challenging mission to replace damaged parts and install new detectors on the Hubble Space Telescope. ...

Broken weapon: mutation disarms HIV-fighting gene. (This Week).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... A gene that once produced a small protein able to prevent HIV from infecting cells now lies unusable in the human genome, scientists have found. In addition to suggesting a new weapon in the battle against AIDS, this so-called pseudogene...

Honey-scented elephants: young males' faces drip sweet signals. (This Week).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... When testosterone begins spiking in young Asian bull elephants, they secrete a liquid from their facial glands that smells like honey, says an international team of researchers. Ancient Hindu poetry referred to bees gathering "sweetness"...

Thin jet flies two for one: double streams yield sheathed nanoballs, fibers. (This Week).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... Powerful electric fields can stretch liquids into narrow jets that burst into sprays of droplets. This phenomenon has revolutionized mass spectrometry, a technique for weighing a sample's constituent atoms and molecules. Meanwhile, some...

Copy crab: DNA confirms that crab forms have several origins. (This Week).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... New genetic evidence suggests that crabs aren't all close relatives and their characteristic shape evolved independently on numerous occasions. Most crabs share such a similar overall shape that they might seem to have come from the same...

Protein repair: new compounds may help cells fight off cancer. (This Week).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... Like a frontline soldier dozing on his rifle, a gene called p53 lies dormant in every cell. At the first signs of cancer, however, the gene springs into action. The protein that it encodes binds to the cell's DNA and initiates a chain reaction...

Avalanche! Scientists are digging out the secrets of lethal flows of snow.
March 2, 2002... Dan Miller, like many graduate students, spends a fair amount of time crouched over a hotplate in a small room. What sets him apart from most others are the parka and gloves he wears while doing so. The temperature in Miller's 4-by-6-meter room...

Tracking tumors: looking for early signs of a therapy's success.
March 2, 2002... Patience is a virtue... sometimes. For people with cancer, patience can be deadly--but they often have no alternative. A treatment can take months to shrink a tumor measurably, slow tumor growth, or prove itself ineffective. While doctors and...

Encouraging signs but no woodpecker. (Biology).(bird watchers detect audible, but not visual, evidence of an ivory-billed woodpecker)
March 2, 2002... Birders searching a Louisiana forest this winter for the long-lost ivory-billed woodpecker heard a knock-knock and would dearly love to know who's there. The ivory-billed woodpecker, with its 31-inch wingspan and 20-inch length, hasn't...

High homocysteine tied to Alzheimer's. (Biomedicine).(homocysteine, an amino acid)(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... For the first time, research has linked the incidence of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia to elevated blood concentrations of the amino acid homocysteine. Scientists had previously connected high homocysteine concentrations to...

Littlest catalysts get a lot of support. (Technology).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... Industry has long used reactive metal clusters stuck to larger, inert particles as chemical catalysts. Today, developers of catalysts are making those clusters as small as possible to maximize exposed metal and thus speed up reactions. New...

Coffee beans, cavity-causing germs. (Biomedicine).(research indicates that coffee may reduce tooth decay)(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... Coffee could be good for your smile. In a new study, compounds in coffee loosen the grip of bacteria that cause tooth decay. Researchers from the Universities of Pavia and Ancona in Italy prepared coffees from beans of various origins and...

Duck-faced croc had a gap-toothed grin. (Paleontology).(no teeth were across the front of a crocodile fossil's mouth)(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... Paleontologists have unearthed fossils of a tiny crocodile that boasted a smile like no other. The 60-centimeter-long species lived about 110 million years ago in the rivers of what would become Africa, side by side with 12-meter-long...

El Nino's coming! Is that so bad? (Climate).(expected in 2002)(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... Recent satellite observations of rainfall patterns over the eastern Indian Ocean hint that the climate phenomenon known as El Nino--typically marked by warming of the equatorial Pacific--will return later this year. Also, although this weather...

Wheat protein smooths ice cream. (Chemistry).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... Ice cream that sits in the freezer too long can have a gritty taste. That's because ice crystals grow large enough for the mouth to feel. Now, experiments under way in Canada are using proteins extracted from winter wheat to keep ice...

More good news about chocolate. (Food and Nutrition).(high-flavanol cocoa, used by the Kuna people, seems to reduce the chance of high blood pressure)(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... How about drinking 5 cups of cocoa every day to keep your blood pressure down? That regimen appears to work for the Kuna people of Central America. The Kunas' cocoa is rich in chemicals, called flavanols, that aren't present in large amounts in...

No Brahe bravo. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
March 2, 2002... Journey through the universe" (SN: 12/22&29/01, p. 392) illustrates the importance of astronomical instruments by suggesting that Copernicus was not "proved right" until the development by Tycho Brahe of sophisticated observational tools late...

The world takes a stand. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
March 2, 2002... Reading "Sometimes lying down is harder work" (SN: 12/22&29/01, p. 391) was to me like deja vu. In the late 1950s, my late colleague Raoul Naroll concluded that more than 90 percent of the world's cultures preferred the upright position for...

Alcohol rub. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
March 2, 2002... I enjoy Science News very much but not the occasional article singing the praises of alcoholic beverages, particularly red wine, as a benefit to the cardiovascular system ("A, glass of red may keep the arteries loose," SN: 1/5/02, p. 8). When...

Star in a jar? Hints of nuclear fusion found--maybe.(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... A group of scientists claims to have found evidence of nuclear fusion in a vase-size flask of liquid. The researchers say they created tiny bubbles that seemed to have collapsed with enough violence to force atomic nuclei to fuse. ...

Space rocks' demo job: asteroids, not comets, pummeled early Earth.(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... It's no secret that the inner solar system took a beating from swarms of speeding objects soon after the planets and moons formed. What's been uncertain is the nature of those extraterrestrial bullets. A new analysis of meteorites suggests that...

When the mercury falls: autumn leaves taint river with poison.(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... Fall leaves that drop into stagnant waterways could release significant doses of a highly toxic form of mercury, new research suggests. Mercury-tainted fish pose a considerable health risk to people (SN: 3/9//91, p. 152). Before the metal...

Odyssey's first look: craft spies signs of ice at the Martian south pole.(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... Astronomers for the first time have found evidence of large amounts of frozen water on Mars. The Red Planet's south-polar region may contain an expanse of ice just beneath its surface, according to data gathered by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft,...

Genetic culprit: mutation increases risk for uterine fibroids.(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... Analysis of DNA from families whose women have been beset by uterine growths reveals a mutation that can predispose women to these so-called fibroids. Uterine fibroids are common, benign tumors that can cause pain, pelvic pressure,...

DNA diaspora: humanity may share tangled genetic roots.(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... The scientific debate over the nature of human evolution has taken a new, genetically inspired twist. Ancient humans migrated out of Africa in at least two major waves, and human groups in Africa, Asia, and Europe have interbred for the...

Underground soil economy: microbes hidden in the dirt react to UV boost.(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... Where the sun never shines, underground microbial communities still change when there's extra radiation up above, says an international research team. In a 5-year test in northern Sweden, aboveground plants didn't show major responses to...

Channel surfing: atomic-resolution snapshots illuminate cellular pores that control ion flow.
March 9, 2002... Sarah Hughes unexpectedly skates to a gold medal in Salt Lake City at the Winter Olympics. Barry Bonds whips a baseball bat around to smack yet another home run. At the age of 22, Garry Kasparov defeats Anatoly Karpov to become the youngest...

A maverick reclaimed: some psychologists say it's time that Egon Brunswik got his due.
March 9, 2002... On a sabbatical trip to Vienna in 1933, Edward C. Tolman, chair of the University of California, Berkeley psychology department and a leading investigator of animal behavior, encountered what he later described as "the chance of a lifetime." At...

Kids' ADHD tied to snoring, sleepiness. (Behavior).(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... Symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) occur with an intriguing frequency in children who snore throughout much of the night, a new study finds. Problems with hyperactivity and inattention also occur excessively in...

A bitter taste in your ... stomach. (Biology).(taste perception in animals)(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... Animals quickly learn to avoid most foods with a bitter taste because these often contain dangerous toxins. Bitterness "is a signal telling us that something is quite wrong in the food we've ingested," says Enrique Rozengurt of the University...

Martian equator: a watery outpost? (Astronomy).(evidence of past flooding on Mars)(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... A catastrophic outpouring of water--four times the volume of Lake Tahoe--may have gushed from fissures near the equator on Mars as recently as 10 million years ago. Images of the fissures and their surroundings, taken by the Mars Global...

Is HAART hard on the heart? (Treatment).(highly active antiretroviral therapy in HIV patients)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
March 9, 2002... Multiple-drug regimens known as highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, have been literally a lifesaver for people with AIDS. But several commonly used antiretroviral drags, especially those called protease inhibitors, boost fatty acid...

Genes predict allergies to drug. (Genetics).(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... Genetic differences among people infected with HIV might help identify the 5 percent of patients who will suffer allergic reactions, ranging from rashes to anaphylactic shock, when given the antiretroviral drug abacavir. A team of...

New drugs help battle HIV. (Treatment).(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... Three potential drugs in development rely on novel tactics for attacking HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. A compound dubbed BMS-806 blocks the entry of HIV into cells, reports Richard J. Colonno of Bristol-Myers Squibb in Wallingford, Conn....

Two steps forward, one step back. (Vaccines).(new AIDS vaccine appears safe)(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... Just a few days after the National Institutes of Health announced it was canceling a large AIDS-vaccine trial, researchers at this meeting announced preliminary results from a new vaccine that appears safe. Although the vaccine probably won't...

Genes, Girls, And Gamow: After The Double Helix.
March 9, 2002... JAMES D. WATSON In a sequel to his first autobiography, The Double Helix, the codiscoverer of DNA'S structure reveals the details of his life in science and in love after the years covered by the earlier book. Since his discovery with...

The Math Of Money: Making Mathematical Sense of Your Personal Finances.
March 9, 2002... MORTON D. DAVIS Many of us have sat in a math class and wondered, What do I need this for? This book reveals one big reason: money. Davis offers a mathematician's view of certain areas of economics and finance. For instance, he helps...

Promiscuity: An Evolutionary History of Sperm Competition.
March 9, 2002... TIM BIRKHEAD If you still subscribe to the Darwinian notion of sexual competition, which holds that only males are promiscuous by nature while females lean toward monogamy, then you are woefully behind the advances in the field of sexual...

Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization.
March 9, 2002... IAN GATELY By the time Christopher Columbus reached the shores of North America, tobacco had reached every corner of the American continents including offshore islands such as Cuba. Europeans, like the Native Americans before them,...

What Makes You Tick? The Brain in Plain English.
March 9, 2002... THOMAS B. CZERNER In a series of concise chapters, the author offers reader-friendly reports of advances in neuroscience. This overview of brain function encompasses topics from the physical interactions of neurons to notions of how ideas...

Scavenger scenario. (Letters).
March 9, 2002... Everyone seems to agree that the Tyrannosaurus rex Sue was seriously debilitated with perhaps a lifelong lameness ("Turn Your Head and Roar," SN: 12/15/01, p. 376). Peter L. Larson attributes her survival to care and feeding by group members....

Toasted chips. (Letters).
March 9, 2002... The discovery that silicon would explode ("Detonating silicon wafers can ID elements," SN: 1/19/02, p. 36) is not news to me. I made a serendipitous discovery over 20 years ago as a computer hobbyist. I discovered that silicon would explode...

Objectivity objection. (Letters).
March 9, 2002... I was disappointed to see Science News depart from its usual objective reporting to cite an antinuclear propagandist as sole authority on the "dangers" of nuclear waste ("Official chooses Nevada for nuclear waste," SN: 1/19/02, p. 39). The...

Stem cell success: Mice fuel debate on embryo cloning. (This Week).(therapeutic cloning)(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... A handful of mutant mice have fired up the debate over the cloning of human embryos to produce cells for medical use. After genetically engineering cells that had been generated by cloning mouse embryos, investigators have partially repaired...

Telescope tuned up: back to work for orbiting observatory. (This Week).(Hubble Space Telescope renovation)(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... A rejuvenated Hubble Space Telescope floated away from the space shuttle Columbia on Saturday, March 9, after astronauts spent a week renovating the observatory. Columbia's crew began the mission March 1. Despite a problem with the...

Troubled hearts: antibiotic might fend off second attack. (This Week).(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... An antibiotic might protect people with heart disease from future coronary events, according to the results of a small-scale trial. The study's limited scope, however, makes its conclusion tentative, some researchers say. They look forward to...

Clever combo: hybrid vaccine prevents West Nile virus in mice. (This Week).(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... A vaccine formulated from pieces of two viruses protects mice against the West Nile virus. Scientists will next try the hybrid vaccine in monkeys and then, if that works, test it in people. West Nile virus was first identified in Uganda in...

Science smarts: talent search honors top student projects in math, science, and engineering. (This Week).(Intel Science Talent Search)(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... Forty students who defy the national trend of slumping test scores in math and science reaped rewards for their excellence this week. At a black-tie dinner in Washington, D.C., the Intel Science Talent Search handed out top awards in its...

Did Mammals Spread from Asia? Carbon blip gives clue to animals' Eden. (This Week).(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... A new dating of Chinese fossils buttresses the idea that an Asian Eden gave rise to at least one of the groups of mammal species that appeared in North America some 55 million years ago. By analyzing the carbon and magnetic characteristics...

Heads up: problem solving pushed bright primates toward bigger brains. (This Week).(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... Progressively larger brains evolved in primates of all stripes, not just humans. We can thank a common capacity for solving a broad range of problems, from coordinating social alliances to inventing tools, according to a new study. This...

Are they really extinct? Searches for plants and animals so rare that they may not be there at all.
March 16, 2002... After 22 years, is it time to give up looking? Are searchers deluding themselves when they refuse to say that long-sought species have gone extinct? Such questions come to mind when talking to botanist Larry Morse of NatureServe, a biodiversity...

Rethinking an astronomical icon: the Eagle's EGGs: not so fertile.(nebula's evaporating gas globules)
March 16, 2002... In 1995, less than 2 years after astronauts installed a device to correct the Hubble Space Telescope's blurry vision, NASA released a picture that captivated millions. In it, eerie blue-green pillars of gas and dust rise up like stalagmites in...

Eight hours of sleep may not be so great. (Biomedicine).(study shows 7 hours may be better)(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... Doctors may recommend it for good health, but researchers now find that sleeping 8 to 9 hours a night doesn't necessarily translate into a longer life. Scientists came to that conclusion after analyzing medical and lifestyle data,...

New human virus tied to obesity. (Obesity).(adenovirus 37)(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... Researchers have identified the second member of a class of human viruses that may increase people's susceptibility to obesity. Previous studies have shown that people and lab animals infected with a virus known as human adenovirus-36, or...

Lack of nutrient turns flu nasty. (Nutrition And Disease).(selenium study)(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... A dietary deficiency in an essential trace mineral may cause a usually harmless strain of the flu to mutate into a virulent pathogen. Studies have suggested that pathogens called coxsackieviruses might be more likely to mutate in hosts that...

Magnetism piece fits no-resistance puzzle. (Physics).(copper oxide)(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... Physicists hotly debate why certain copper oxide crystals can conduct electricity without resistance, or superconduct, at temperatures far higher than conventional superconductors can. Now, a German-French-Russian team led by Bernhard...

Probing Jupiter's big magnetic bubble. (Astronomy).(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... Simultaneous measurements by two spacecraft have probed in greater detail than ever before the invisible bubble of charged particles that surrounds Jupiter. The bubble, or magnetosphere, is the solar system's largest structure with sharp...

Fringy flowers are hard to dunk. (Botany).(fringe may protect certain flowers)(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... What good is fringe to a flower? People have traditionally considered fringe as merely part of the display for pollinators, says Joseph E. Armstrong of Illinois State University in Normal. It does enhance that the flower's visual appeal, but...

Alzheimer's disease vaccine abandoned. (Biomedicine).(Elan Corp. ceases testing after some subjects develop brain inflammation)(Brief Article)
March 16, 2002... The bad news continues for the novel strategy of immunizing people against Alzheimer's disease. Elan Corp. of Dublin now acknowledges that 15 people developed potentially dangerous brain inflammation after receiving vaccinations designed to...

Cultivating Delight: a Natural History of My Garden. (Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest).
March 16, 2002... DIANE ACKERMAN The author of A Natural History of the Senses waxes poetic about the life cycles of her upstate New York garden. Hardly a how-to book on growing plants, Cultivating Delight is more of a primer on how to appreciate the plants...

Evolution: the Triumph of an Idea. (Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest).
March 16, 2002... CARL ZIMMER This sweeping text tracks the far-reaching effects of a single idea--Charles Darwin's notion of evolution--on our modern, everyday lives. Zimmer offers both a clear historical perspective on the 160-year legacy of Darwin's idea...

How Do You Spell Haagen-Dazs? The How to Say It Spelling Dictionary of Brands, Companies, Places, and Products. (Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest).
March 16, 2002... CARL HAUSMAN AND SHERRY HAUSMAN This dictionary covers territory avoided by Webster's and Scrabble dictionaries alike: It lists the correct spellings of thousands of brand names, corporations, drugs, associations, universities, media...

Mathematical Treks: from Surreal Numbers to Magic Circles. (Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest).
March 16, 2002... IVARS PETERSON In February 1996, Peterson began writing about what he proclaimed as "cool stuff" for a new online column about mathematics. That column continues today as "Ivars Peterson's Math Trek" on the Science News Web site...

Our Universe: the Thrill of Extragalactic Explorations as Told by Leading Experts. (Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest).
March 16, 2002... ALAN S. STERN Nine distinguished astrophysicists escort readers to the depths of the universe and the forefront of the quest to determine where we came from and what the universe consists of. Among the essays in this collection are those...

Prime Mover: a Natural History of Muscle. (Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest).
March 16, 2002... STEVEN VOGEL Why does squid get chewy if it's cooked too long? How do hand tools serve as extensions of our muscles? How do katydids make such a loud sound? How much work can a muscle do? In answering these and many more questions, this...

Tender and tough. (Letters).
March 16, 2002... From a cattleman's perspective, I would like to add to your timely article "Hormones: Here's the beef" (SN: 1/5/02, p. 10) that besides the benefits that would come to the environment from stopping the use of pharmaceutical growth promoters in...

Unified erectus: fossil suggests single human ancestor.(skull indicates the presence of Homo erectus in Africa, as well as Asia)(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... A newly found, million-year-old African skull is fueling an ongoing debate over whether Homo erectus was a single wide-ranging species or several localized ones. The skull appears similar to those found in Asia, suggesting that the populations...

Brave new drug: compound stops cowpox and smallpox viruses.(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... By cloaking an antiviral drug in a fat molecule, scientists have developed a new compound that people might someday swallow to ward off smallpox. A vaccine against smallpox exists, but governments' supplies have dwindled since the disease...

Microbes fire an oozie: slime engines may push bacteria along.(bacterial motion)(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... Threads of goop oozing from tiny nozzles in the cell walls of some bacteria exert sufficient force to nudge the creatures along, anew study finds. This result may solve a decades-old puzzle about bacterial motion. Many bacteria get around...

Old frilly face: Triceratops' relative fills fossil-record gap.(fossils in China reveal possible predecessor to horned, herbivorous dinosaurs)(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... Fossils of a creature the size of a large house cat cast new light on the early evolution of the group of horned, herbivorous dinosaurs that later included the 8-meter-long Triceratops. This group, the ceratopsians, was one of the last and...

Leave it to evolution: duplicated gene aids odd monkey diet.(colobine monkeys have a diet of leaves)(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... Instead of eating fruits and insects as most monkey species do, colobine monkeys in Asia and Africa have a diet more like cows'. They don't graze on grass, but they do ingest leaves. Two groups of biologists have found that evolution tailored...

A confluence of contaminants: streams' organic mix may pose environmental risk.(mixture of drugs, insect repellents, antibiotics, and other substances in US water supply)(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... Three years of work by U.S. government scientists have identified at least 82 drugs, hormones, and other organic compounds that pollute national waterways. The individual contaminants, ranging from insect repellents to cattle antibiotics,...

Cold hamsters: wild species boosts immunity for winter.(immune systems of Siberian hamsters)(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... Hamsters that have to survive winter outdoors in Siberia rev up their immune systems when days grow short, according to new lab tests. They even pump up their response to psychological stress. In the same genus as pet-store standards, the...

Water for the rock; did Earth's oceans come from the heavens?(research into the origin of the Earth's seas)
March 23, 2002... More than 4.5 billion years ago, the sun and its planets were taking shape from a rotating disk of ice, gas, and dust. This protosolar nebula was hotter and denser toward its center and cooler and less dense farther out. These gradients...

The black hole next door; mighty particle collisions may bring black holes to venues near you.
March 23, 2002... Think of a black hole. No one has ever observed one directly, but chances are that you envision some gargantuan jet-black entity that's far, far away and insatiably consuming any matter or light that comes near it. Some physicists whose job...

Computer simulates full nuclear blast. (Physics).(Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos laboratories)(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... The U.S. government proudly announced on March 7 that it has for the first time detonated a thermonuclear weapon--in a complete, three-dimensional computer simulation, that is. Two year ago, researchers working for Lawrence Livermore...

Clones face uncertain future. (Biology).(reaports that cloned animals are quick to develop obesity and disease)(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... For every step forward cloning makes, two steps backward seem to follow. In the Feb. 21 Nature, researchers at Texas A&M University in College Station announced that they had cloned a cat, producing a seemingly healthy kitten they named Cc...

When brains wring colors from words. (Behavior).(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... In the peculiar world of synesthesia, people experience an involuntary joining of different sensations. These individuals may, for example, feel intense facial pressure when listening to music or see vivid colors in response to spoken words....

Clot busters may put elderly people at risk. (Biomedicine).(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... Drugs that dissolve blood clots in heart attack patients save thousands of lives every year. However, a new study questions whether these powerful, so-called clot busters are safe for the oldest heart patients. Researchers reviewed the...

Finding networks within networks. (Computing).(search engine algorithm)(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... When Gary W. Flake searches for a certain computer scientist on the World Wide Web, he gets deluged with unwanted information about someone else. The scientist's name? Michael Jordan. A new algorithm developed by Flake of the NEC Research...

Early hunters are guilty as charged. (Paleontology).(extinction of prehistoric animals)(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... The spread of humanity around the world often coincided with extinctions of large animals. For example, when humans migrated to the Americas--traditionally dated to 11,000 years ago--around 135 mammalian species disappeared within a few hundred...

Computer sharing tackles anthrax. (Biomedicine).(Brief Article)
March 23, 2002... A drug-discovery effort using more than a million personal computers worldwide has identified thousands of compounds that could form the basis of a cure for anthrax, researchers at the University of Oxford in England announced March 8. The...