Science News articles from March 2007

Science News archives from March 2007

Hepatitis E vaccine passes critical test.
March 3, 2007... An experimental vaccine for hepatitis E has proved nearly 96 percent protective in a test among soldiers in Nepal. The results set the stage for a final trial that could lead to commercialization of the vaccine, the first to be developed...

Female chimps move to fore in hunting.
March 3, 2007... For the first time, researchers have observed wild chimpanzees making and using tools for hunting. What's more, it's mostly the female chimps and juveniles that adopt this style of attack, which occasionally nabs a small mammal that the chimp...

A nanoscale coating reflects almost no light.
March 3, 2007... The velvet background on a painting of Elvis looks black because it reflects so little light. But getting a surface to reflect no light at all is surprisingly difficult. Now, researchers have created a virtually reflectionfree surface by...

By following trails, periwinkles save slime.(snails)
March 3, 2007... A seaside snail crawling along the gooey streak left by another snail is saving a lot of energy, say researchers, because it doesn't have to ooze so much slime itself. Scientists have observed various kinds of snails following each others'...

Craft take panoramic view of solar eruptions.(coronal mass ejections)
March 3, 2007... Even at its most quiescent, the sun hurls into space a billion-ton cloud of charged particles every 2 days or so. The few particles that strike our planet can disrupt satellites and knock out power systems on the ground. Twin spacecraft...

Brain differences may herald drug addiction.
March 3, 2007... Differences in the behavior and the brain receptors of rats seem to predict which of the rodents will become cocaine addicted, scientists report. The finding supports the idea that some people are predisposed to drug addiction. Scientists...

Different pollutants show same impact.
March 3, 2007... At concentrations present in the environment, each of three dissimilar toxic agents can seize control of a signaling pathway that regulates developing cells in the brain and spinal cord, researchers report. They suggest that scientists might...

Ancient slowpoke.(fossils)(Brief article)
March 3, 2007... A 1-centimeter-long 505-million-year-old fossil from British Columbia connects two lineages of marine invertebrates from the Cambrian period that scientists hadn't previously linked. One group, the halkieriids, protected themselves with plates...

Diabetes drugs attack another disease of obesity.
March 3, 2007... Several years ago, Carlos Herrera Macias, 55, learned that he had type 2 diabetes. He already knew about that obesity-related disease--his mother had had it too. But his doctors soon delivered a second diagnosis that was unfamiliar to Macias....

Potential liver treatments abound.
March 3, 2007... An array of potential therapies besides the insulin-sensitizing drugs is being tested against fatty liver disease. They range from surgery to bonus bacteria and include some that have shown promise in people in at least one clinical trial. ...

The cute and the shocking at Meerkat Manor.
March 3, 2007... Tim Clutton-Brock has suddenly said, for reasons not at all clear to me, "Hard-boiled egg." Perhaps it's best to ignore this. So, I ask him again in our phone conversation what he would pick as the highlights of his past 13 years of directing a...

Lighting up for uranium.(Brief article)
March 3, 2007... A portable sensor that borrows a trick from biotechnology could lead to rapid detectors of environmental uranium contamination, researchers say. Yi Lu of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his coworkers built a sensor...

New age for ancient Americans.(clovis culture)(Brief article)
March 3, 2007... Researchers have long regarded remains of the prehistoric Clovis culture as the oldest solid evidence of people in the Americas. However, new radiocarbon dates for North American Clovis sites challenge that assumption. Clovis culture...

How antipsychotic drugs can cause weight gain.(Brief article)
March 3, 2007... A study of mice has identified a biological mechanism by which certain psychiatric medications cause people to gain weight. Researchers linked the appetite-increasing effects of three such drugs--the so-called atypical antipsychotics...

Breaking a molecule's mirror image.(Brief article)
March 3, 2007... Physicists have demonstrated how a molecule's symmetry can be broken. Reinhard Dorner of Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and his colleagues began an experiment with a single, symmetrical molecule made of two...

A cornea that's got some nerve.(Brief article)
March 3, 2007... Scientists have developed a technique to grow corneal tissue that includes nerve cells, an advance that may enable researchers to test consumer products in lab dishes rather than in live animals. Previously, scientists had created tissues...

Subglacial lakes may influence ice flow.(Brief article)
March 3, 2007... The flow of water into and out of massive, ice-covered lakes in Antarctica may influence the speed at which overlying glaciers move toward the sea, a new study suggests. Some of the speediest glaciers in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet are...

Cocoa compound increases brain's blood flow.
March 3, 2007... Cocoa that retains compounds usually removed to soften the product's favor can significantly improve blood flow to the brain, say researchers. The finding could eventually lead to treatments for a variety of ills, including strokes and...

Fungus produces cancer drug.(Brief article)
March 3, 2007... Several varieties of fungi that attack hazelnuts produce high quantities of the widely used cancer drug paclitaxel, researchers report. Companies currently extract the powerful but expensive drug from the bark of yew trees. Since the early...

GONZO GIZMOS: More Projects and Devices to Channel Your Inner Geek.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 3, 2007... How would you like to be able to tell someone you built a radio transmitter? Or made ice cream without an ice cream maker? These projects and more are included in this guide to building scientific gadgets using materials readily found...

A Scientist's Guide to Talking With the Media: Practical Advice From the Union of Concerned Scientists.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 3, 2007... Hot topics such as global warming and stem cell research garner a great deal of media coverage, but this book asserts that such coverage is often lacking in factual information. As a result, many adults are poorly informed about the science...

Birds of the World.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 3, 2007... Some of bird-watching's appeal lies in its simplicity, writes Beletsky. An ornithologist and a writer, he offers not a comprehensive encyclopedia or a field guide, but rather a richly illustrated introduction to various wild birds. The book is...

Discovering the Solar System.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 3, 2007... Complete with two books, a desktop mobile, and an interactive wall chart, this pack covers a range of information about the solar system. The first book, written by Hughes, vice president of the Royal Astronomical Society, provides an overview...

The Last Forest: The Amazon in the Age of Globalization.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 3, 2007... The Amazon rainforest in Brazil is larger than the area of the United States west of the Mississippi River, and it houses the world's richest concentration of animal and plant life. London and Kelly chronicle how the forest has changed in the...

Up, down, around.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 3, 2007... I haven't seen any reference to the similarity between the "morphing" wing ("Ahead of the Curve: Novel morphing wing may reduce aircraft's fuel use," SN: 12/23&30/06, p. 406) and the "warping" wing that the Wright brothers used on their...

Missing matchmaker.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 3, 2007... "No-Dad Dragons: Komodos reproduce without males" (SN: 12/23&30/06, p. 403) seems to gloss over an important issue. With only 4,,000 dragons left in the world, why was this female, one of only a thousand females remaining, not paired with a...

A hole too far.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 3, 2007... The statement in "A New Spin: X rays shed light on black holes" (SN: 1/6/07, p. 8) that astronomers "don't yet have" a probe to journey to the vicinity of a black hole is puzzling. As far as I know, the closest known black hole is V4641, more...

Bone to pick.(LETTERS)(Brief article)
March 3, 2007... Regarding "Bad to the Bone: Acid stoppers appear to have a downside" (SN: 1/6/07, p. 3), without a corresponding study of bone densities, it's not possible to determine whether the link between proton-pump inhibitors and increased fractures in...

Living long on less? Mouse and human cells respond to slim diets.
March 10, 2007... Scientists have known since the 1930s that mice and other animals live 30 to 50 percent longer when placed on a diet that's low in calories yet nutritionally complete. The unanswered question has been whether calorie restriction has the same...

Mafia cowbirds: do they muscle birds that don't play ball?
March 10, 2007... Cowbirds in Illinois that sneak their eggs into other birds' nests retaliate violently if their scam gets foiled, researchers say. The brown-headed cowbirds of North America outsource nest building and chick raising. Female cowbirds dart...

Schizophrenia plus and minus: cognitive course nudges patients into workforce.
March 10, 2007... Two approaches to treating schizophrenia, a severe mental disorder that affects an estimated 1 in 100 adults worldwide, receive contrasting evaluations in new studies. On the disappointing side, patients with schizophrenia who took any of...

Saturn's rings: a panoramic perspective.(Brief article)
March 10, 2007... Sailing high above Saturn, NASA'S Cassini spacecraft recently made this sweeping portrait of the icy rings that girdle the planet. "It's a view that no human has had before, nor a spacecraft," says Cassini scientist Carolyn Porco of the Space...

Bad influence: TV, movies linked to adolescent smoking.
March 10, 2007... White adolescents who watch a lot of R-rated movies are nearly three times as likely to try smoking as are their peers who watch little of such fare, a new study finds. Those who have televisions in their bedrooms are twice as likely to take a...

High and dry: pollution may stifle mountain precipitation.(Daniel Rosenfeld at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem studies effect of pollution on rainfall)
March 10, 2007... Trends seen in meteorological data gathered on a Chinese mountaintop suggest that air pollution reduces the amount of precipitation that falls at high-altitude sites. When winds force moisture-laden air masses up a mountainside, the air...

Functional family: mock theta mystery solved.
March 10, 2007... A pair of mathematicians has solved a problem that had tantalized numbertheory researchers for more than 8 decades. It is the so-called final problem of the legendary Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. In the years before his...

Unlocking the gaits: robot tests locomotion switch.
March 10, 2007... A blocky, bright-yellow robot that would look at home in a toy chest moves like a salamander, as its inventors intended. The robot and the mathematical model behind it provide insights into how vertebrates transitioned from swimming to walking,...

Traces of trouble: removing the small but potent quantities of estrogens from waterways.
March 10, 2007... In 1978, during a routine ecological assessment of several British waterways, wildlife biologists discovered an unusually high number of abnormal fish living downstream of two sewage-treatment plants. The fish were considered intersexual...

Not-so-perma frost: warming climate is taking its toll on subterranean ice.
March 10, 2007... Daniel Fortier spends his summers studying the permafrost on Bylot Island, high in the eastern Canadian Arctic. While hiking there early in the 1999 field season, he distinctly heard the sound of running water yet saw no streams nearby. "I...

Long-term threat: young cancer survivors face risks later.
March 10, 2007... Childhood-cancer treatment is one of the success stories of the late 20th century. A child diagnosed with cancer in the 1970s had a 56 percent chance of surviving for 5 years. Today, that likelihood is nearly 80 percent. With that gain,...

A crack at life.(Brief article)
March 10, 2007... New images of ancient cracks on Mars suggest that liquid may have percolated through underground rock, providing a possible habitat for primitive life. NASA'S Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which carries the most powerful magnifying camera...

DNA pinpoints poached ivory tusks.(Brief article)
March 10, 2007... Poaching of elephants in Africa has surged in recent years, driven by ivory prices that have more than quadrupled since 2004. Bans on killing elephants are difficult to enforce, partly because authorities don't often know where on the vast...

Spicy finds from before Columbus.(Linda Perry of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington finds evidence of chili pepper use at least 6,100 years ago)(Brief article)
March 10, 2007... People living in areas extending from the Bahamas to southern Peru cultivated and consumed chili peppers at least 6,100 years ago, a new study finds. Only after Columbus' voyages to the New World did the spicy condiments reach other parts of...

Body clock affects racing prowess.(Brief article)
March 10, 2007... When it comes to athletic performance, everyone's a night owl, a new study suggests. Shawn D. Youngstedt and his colleagues at the University of South Carolina in Columbia erased time-of-day cues in 25 trained collegiate swimmers by...

Growing Carnivorous Plants.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 10, 2007... GROWING CARNIVOROUS PLANTS BARRY A. RICE Among the plant world's most fascinating specimens are those that feed on animal flesh. For the more-adventurous gardener, Rice provides this comprehensive guide to growing carnivorous plants, from...

Discovering Dorothea: The Life of the Pioneering Fossil-Hunter Dorothea Bate.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 10, 2007... DISCOVERING DOROTHEA: The Life of the Pioneering Fossil-Hunter Dorothea Bate KAROLYN SHINDLER One day in 1898, a young woman from South Kensington, England, did the unthinkable: She demanded a job as a scientist at the new Natural History...

Iwoz.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 10, 2007... IWOZ STEVE WOZNIAK AND GINA SMITH Thanks in large part to Steve Wozniak, computers that were once loud, room-size behemoths have been transformed into the desktop and portable tools that nearly everyone uses today. For the first time,...

Kennedy Space Center: Gateway to Space.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 10, 2007... KENNEDY SPACE CENTER: Gateway to Space DAVID WEST REYNOLDS Marshy Cape Canaveral, jutting into the Atlantic, has been the launching point for the dreams of scientists, astronauts, and ordinary citizens. In this first complete history of the...

Conversations on Consciousness.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 10, 2007... CONVERSATIONS ON CONSCIOUSNESS SUSAN BLACKMORE Consciousness. Where does it come from? Is it somehow separate from the human brain? Can the brain itself comprehend it? Inspired by a conference on consciousness in 2000, Blackmore, a lecturer...

Cosmic cling.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 10, 2007... At least on Earth, rock impacts result in charging of the particles ("Rocky Finding: Evidence of extrasolar asteroid belt," SN: 1/6/07, p. 5). In space, wouldn't this have a great effect on the motion of the rocks? STUART HOENIG, TUCSON,...

Double dose?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 10, 2007... Regarding "Folic Acid Dilemma: One vitamin may impair cognition if another is lacking" (SN: 1/13/07, p.19), would it be feasible for the government to require both folate and vitamin [B.sub.12] in grain products? NANCY POWER, ALTADENA,...

Watch your fingers.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 10, 2007... Regarding "Digital Fingerprints: Tiny behavioral differences can reveal your identity online," SN: 1/13/07, p. 26), Morse code "fist" analysis can easily be defeated by a software buffer that conforms the intervals between all types of strokes....

Half empty.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 10, 2007... Although "almost half" of the individuals came to agree that coerced eating-disorders treatment was justified, I find it irresponsible that the study seemingly ignored the identification of potentially long-lasting negative effects on more than...

Correction.(Correction notice)
March 10, 2007... "Suburb of Stonehenge: Ritual village found near famed rock site" (SN: 2/3/07, p. 67) referred to unearthed houses measuring "16 square feet" but should have described them as 16 feet by 16 feet.

Brain fix: stem cells supply missing enzyme.
March 17, 2007

Ancient slow growth: fossil teeth show roots of human development.
March 17, 2007

Warming up to criticality: quantum change, one bubble at a time.
March 17, 2007

First family: Pluto-size body has siblings.
March 17, 2007

It's a girl: Atlantic mystery squid undergoes scrutiny.
March 17, 2007

New memory manager: DNA silencer also controls memory formation.
March 17, 2007

The next generation: Intel Science Talent Search honors high school achievers.
March 17, 2007

Herbal herbicides: weed killers manufactured by Mother Nature.(Cover story)
March 17, 2007

Games theory: online play can help researchers tackle tough computational problems.
March 17, 2007

Dance of the dead.(Brief article)
March 17, 2007

Hibernation concentrates chemicals.(Brief article)
March 17, 2007

Scrubbing troubles.(triclosan)(Brief article)
March 17, 2007

Emerging bug pilfers DNA.(Brief article)
March 17, 2007

EPA council sets priorities.(Environmental Protection Agency's Science Policy Council )(Brief article)
March 17, 2007

Hey, it's cooler near the sprinklers.(Brief article)
March 17, 2007

Atlas of Bird Migration: Tracing the Great Journeys of the World's Birds.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 17, 2007

The End of the Wild.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 17, 2007

American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 17, 2007

Brainteaser Physics: Challenging Physics Puzzlers.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 17, 2007

Encyclopedia of Hardy Plants: Annuals, Bulbs, Herbs, Perennials, Shrubs, Trees, Vegetables, Fruits and Nuts.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 17, 2007

Disputable thesis.(Letter to the editor)
March 17, 2007

Fat or fit city?(Letter to the editor)
March 17, 2007

Young and restless: ancient Earth shows moving crust.
March 24, 2007... Tectonic movements of Earth's crust began at least 3.8 billion years ago, according to new evidence from the oldest known rock formation. After Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, its cooling surface eventually developed continental...

Waistline worry: common chemicals might boost obesity.
March 24, 2007... A family of chemicals implicated in testosterone declines may also be contributing to recent spikes in obesity and diabetes, according to a new study. Phthalates show up in a wide range of manufactured items, from cosmetics to vinyl...

Closer to vanishing: bending light as a step toward invisibility cloaks.(visible light)
March 24, 2007... Harry Potter fans, do not despair! Invisibility cloaks may be a long shot, but last year physicists demonstrated technology that might someday hide you from radar. Now, two groups of researchers have taken steps toward performing the same trick...

Risky flames: firefighter coronaries spike during blazes.
March 24, 2007... Fighting fires is hard on the heart. In fact, heart disease causes 45 percent of on-the-job deaths among firefighters, compared with only 22 percent among police officers. New research shows that a disproportionate number of the firefighter...

Balancing act: excess steroids during pregnancy may pose risks for offspring.
March 24, 2007... A baby born prematurely risks having underdeveloped lungs that leave the newborn vulnerable to serious health problems. For that reason, a pregnant woman who shows signs of delivering very early often receives steroid hormones, which speed her...

Not so wimpy: antimalarial mosquito has an edge in tests.
March 24, 2007... For the first time, a mosquito strain engineered to resist malaria has beaten regular mosquitoes in a lab test of overall fitness. The finding offers encouragement to scientists working to fight human malaria by bioengineering mosquitoes...

Solar-staring spacecraft shows its flare.(Brief article)
March 24, 2007... Hurling a storm of charged particles earthward, this solar eruption was imaged Dec. 13, 2008, by the recently launched Japanese-U.S.-British Hinode spacecraft (SN: 11/11/06, p. 309). A flare (bright areas) arches over a sunspot, whose dark...

Feeling right from wrong: brain's social emotions steer moral judgments.
March 24, 2007... People who suffer damage to a brain area that generates compassion, shame, and other social sentiments apply coldly rational thinking to hypothetical moral dilemmas, even those that involve terrible personal loss, a team of neuroscientists...

Ticket to ride? Astrophysicists mull a return to the moon.
March 24, 2007... Scientists who study the moon and design the spacecraft to get there are typically worlds apart from astronomers who explore the realms of space beyond the solar system. The two groups attend different meetings, talk a different lingo, and...