Science News articles from May 2006

Science News archives from May 2006

Tainted by cleanser: antimicrobial agent persists in sludge.(This Week)
May 6, 2006... About 76 percent of a commonly used antimicrobial agent exits sewage-treatment plants as a component of the sludge that's often used as a farm fertilizer, according to the first study to track the chemical through a typical plant. The finding...

Evolutionary back story: thoroughly modern spine supported human ancestor.(This Week)
May 6, 2006... Bones from a spinal column discovered at a nearly 1.8-million-year-old site in central Asia support the controversial possibility that ancient human ancestors spoke to one another. Excavations in 2005 at Dmanisi, Georgia, yielded five...

No early birds: migrators can't catch advancing caterpillars.(This Week)
May 6, 2006... Pied flycatcher numbers are crashing in places where climate change has knocked the birds' spring migration out of sync with the food bonanza on the breeding ground. That's the conclusion from a study of nine breeding areas in the...

Boyish brains: plastic chemical alters behavior of female mice.(This Week)
May 6, 2006... Exposure to the main ingredient of polycarbonate plastics can modify brain formation in female mouse fetuses and make the lab animals, later in life, display a typically male behavior pattern, scientists have announced. The chemical,...

Big breakup: that's the way the comet crumbles.(This Week)
May 6, 2006... Scores of telescopes are watching a comet fall apart, and the main show may be only beginning. The comet has already fragmented into at least 59 pieces and may continue to break up as it reaches its position closest to the sun on June 6. In...

Defending against a deadly foe: vaccine forestalls fearsome virus.(This Week)
May 6, 2006... A single injection of an experimental vaccine prevents infection by the lethal Marburg virus in monkeys, a study finds. The test is the first to show that a vaccine given after exposure to the virus can stop it. People infected with Marburg, a...

Blood sucker: like the adult heart, the developing heart takes advantage of suction.(This Week)
May 6, 2006... The embryonic heart, though only a simple tube, uses the same basic mechanism to move blood as an adult heart does, new observations in zebrafish suggest. Adult hearts in vertebrates, such as zebrafish and people, pump blood using valves...

Particular problems: Assessing risks of nanotechnology.
May 6, 2006... On March 10, an unusual product inventory went live on the Web. The items, which include wrinkle-banishing creams and reinforced tennis rackets and hockey sticks, don't look out of the ordinary. The shared feature of these 200-or-so seemingly...

The whole Enceladus: a new place to search for life in the outer solar system.
May 6, 2006... Step aside, Europa. Make way, Titan. Saturn's small moon Enceladus is becoming one of the hottest places to look for signs of life in the chilly outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft recently discovered that a giant plume of water...

Bird hormone cuts noise distractions.(ZOOLOGY)(Brief article)
May 6, 2006... A jolt of springtime hormones makes a female sparrow's brain more responsive to song, say researchers. The female hormone estradiol doesn't do this by boosting the tissue's response to song, though. Instead, it dulls the reaction to junk...

Study finds bias in peer review.(SCIENCE & SOCIETY)(Brief article)
May 6, 2006... Researchers have found evidence of bias when scientists review data and the researcher's name and affiliation are available to the reviewers. The survey focused on some 67,000 research abstracts submitted to the American Heart Association...

Two drugs are equal in preventing breast cancer.(BIOMEDICINE)(raloxifene (Evista) with tamoxifen (Nolvadex) )(Brief article)
May 6, 2006... A commonly prescribed anti-osteoporosis drug works as well at preventing breast cancer in postmenopausal women as the sole drug currently prescribed for the task, a head-to-head trial shows. Scientists designed the study to compare oral...

Liver regeneration tied to bile acids.(MICROBIOLOGY)(Brief article)
May 6, 2006... Bile plays an integral role in the regeneration of damaged liver tissue, a study finds. The liver manufactures bile, which is then stored in the gall bladder. From there, it moves into the small intestine where it helps digest fats. Up to...

Just turn your back, Mom.(ZOOLOGY)(Brief article)
May 6, 2006... A female in a species of legless amphibians called caecilians nourishes her youngsters by letting them eat the skin off her back, says an international research team. Caecilians, which look like worms or snakes, burrow through the soil in...

Confined gas rejects compromise.(PHYSICS)(Brief article)
May 6, 2006... Imagine pouring cold milk into a cup of hot coffee and finding that the milk stays cold while the coffee stays hot. Physicists have now achieved a similarly strange result by restricting atoms of an ultracold gas to motion in just one...

Clinical trials really pay off.(SCIENCE & SOCIETY)(Brief article)
May 6, 2006... A new study finds that large-scale human trials of new treatments in medicine have the potential to pay rich dividends--huge economic benefits from improved quality of life. S. Claiborne Johnston and his colleagues at the University of...

Wired for math.(NEUROSCIENCE)(brain research)(Brief article)
May 6, 2006... The same neural circuits that adults use to perform complex calculations are already at work in preschoolers doing basic math, a new study finds. This result suggests that the brain is set up to process numbers early in life. How the brain...

The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 6, 2006... THE JASONS: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite ANN FINKBEINER The Jasons, as silly as the name might sound nowadays, was an elite and deadly serious group of scientists that advised the U.S. government on defense strategies...

The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 6, 2006... THE FIRST HUMAN: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors ANN GIBBONS Anthropologists face a variety of obstacles as they search for fossils in Africa, the cradle of humanity: sandstorms, relentless heat, and the occasional...

The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 6, 2006... THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius JOYCE E. CHAPLIN From childhood, most people in the United States remember the iconic image of founding father Benjamin Franklin flying a kite during a...

Deep Sky Objects: The Best and Brightest from Four Decades of Comet Chasing.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 6, 2006... DEEP SKY OBJECTS: The Best and Brightest from Four Decades of Comet Chasing DAVID H, LEVY In this book, Levy offers budding astronomers an introduction to deep-sky objects, objects beyond the solar system. These celestial wonders...

Same old grind.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 6, 2006... "Ancient Andean Maize Makers: Finds push back farming, trade in highland Peru" (SN: 3/4/06, p. 132) remarks on maize starch granules being "consistent with" stone grinding. The presence of lowland arrowroot on one tool is consistent with trade,...

It's my decision.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 6, 2006... "Do Over: New MS drug may be safe after all" (SN: 3/4/06, p. 131) contained a very disturbing comment: "Neurologist Annette Langer-Gould of Stanford University says that even the 1-in-l,000 risk of PML [leukemia] 'seems to outweigh the...

The party's over?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 6, 2006... Light pollution ('Light All Night," SN: 3/18/06,p. 170) is a side effect of cheap fossil fuels. As such, we may be closer to the end of this problem than most people think Electricity is still the best bargain in the civilized world, but...

Legal debate: assumptions on medical malpractice called into question.(This Week)
May 13, 2006... The notion that many medical-malpractice lawsuits are frivolous and intended to generate undeserved riches for plaintiffs and their lawyers isn't borne out in a new study. A review of almost 1,500 randomly selected malpractice lawsuits in...

Speed bump: tip's tricks sort DNA, write at nanoscale.(This Week)
May 13, 2006... Using an old tool in surprising new ways, scientists in California are making molecules race down the sloping sides of a minuscule silicon spike ordinarily reserved for poking at atoms. The novel role for the spike, which is the tip of an...

Sharing the health: cells from unusual mice make others cancerfree.(This Week)
May 13, 2006... Immune-cell transplants from an extraordinary strain of mice that resists cancer can pass this trait to mice that aren't as lucky, according to a new study. Seven years ago, Zheng Cui and Mark Willingham of Wake Forest University in...

Blast survivors: fragments of asteroid found in ancient crater.(This Week)
May 13, 2006... Pieces of an asteroid that blasted a 70-kilometer-wide crater in southern Africa millions of years ago have been found intact within the crater, a unique discovery that defies models of such collisions. The Morokweng crater lies beneath a...

Sleight of herb: black cohosh mislabeled in medicinal products.(This Week)
May 13, 2006... A sizable fraction of the herbal supplements marketed as preparations of black cohosh contain none of that North American plant, researchers report. Some past studies suggested that black cohosh lessens menopausal symptoms, but 3 of 11 recently...

Monkey business: specimen of new species shakes up family tree.(This Week)
May 13, 2006... A species of Tanzanian monkey first identified last year may actually require a separate genus, says an international research team. It would be the first new genus for monkeys in 79 years. Last year, the rare, reclusive monkey was...

Hubble eyes Jupiter's second red spot.(This Week)
May 13, 2006... Say hello to Red Jr. These Hubble Space Telescope images, released last week, are the sharpest views yet of a second red storm high in Jupiter's atmosphere. About half the diameter of the planet's venerable Great Red Spot (right of box in left...

Cattle's call of the wild: domestication may hold complex genetic tale.(This Week)
May 13, 2006... A new investigation of DNA that was obtained from modern cattle and from fossils of their ancient, wild ancestors puts scientists on the horns of a domestication dilemma. The new data challenge the mainstream idea, based on earlier genetic...

Predicting Parkinson's: researchers search for early warnings in the brain.
May 13, 2006... In the painting "Nude with Parkinson's," a woman kneels forward onto her elbows, bent under the weight of swirls of red, orange, and black. "[It] shows my struggle to maintain balance while being pummeled by the demands of everyday life," says...

Nectar: the first soft drink: food coloring, preservatives, and all.(Cover story)
May 13, 2006... Pressurized fizz and industrial processing aside, modern soft drink makers lag millions of years behind the curve, still catching up with the original purveyors of tasty, sugary beverages. Flowering plants have spent aeons competing with each...

Crust on a star.(ASTRONOMY)(Brief article)
May 13, 2006... By analyzing X rays generated by the rumblings of a neutron star 40,000 light-years from Earth, astronomers have estimated the thickness of the dense star's crust. In December 2004, spacecraft including NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer...

An aging protein?(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief article)
May 13, 2006... The same protein that, when defective, causes a premature-aging disease may also play a role in normal aging. Children with Hutchinson Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS) have maladies of aging, such as baldness and arthritis. Yet "it...

Ancient islanders get a leg up.(ANATOMY)(Brief article)
May 13, 2006... Fossils of a humanlike species dubbed Homo floresiensis that lived on the Pacific island of Flores between 18,000 and 12,000 years ago recently grabbed headlines because scientists deduced that this creature stood no more than 1 meter tall and...

Neandertals take out their small blades.(TOOLMAKING)(Brief article)
May 13, 2006... Excavations of Neandertal artifacts at two eaves in northern Spain have yielded an unexpected discovery--a trove of thin, double-edged stone blades that researchers usually regard as the work of Stone Age people who lived much later. In...

Digging up debate in a French cave.(OCCUPATIONS)(Neandertal culture called the Chatelperronian)
May 13, 2006... More than 50 years ago, Henri Delporte excavated a French cave known as Grotte des Fees at Chatelperron. He unearthed many large stone tools characteristic of Neandertals as well as a surprise: small, sharpened points seemingly made by the...

Making sacrifices in Stone Age societies.(CULTURE)(Brief article)
May 13, 2006... Double and triple burials at 23,000-to-27,000-year-old sites in Europe and western Asia suggest prehistoric human sacrifices, says Vincenzo Formicola of the University of Pisa in Italy. Of 30 known burials from that time period and area, 6...

Meetings.(Brief article)
May 13, 2006... Paleoanthropology Society and Society for American Archaeology San Juan, Puerto Rico, April 24-30

Now hear this.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 13, 2006... Unless the writer is deliberately implying an archaic theory of evolution in "Can you hear me now? Frogs in roaring streams use ultrasonic calls" (SN: 3/18/06 p. 165), the statement "Ultrasonic perception may have developed as the frogs...

No direction home?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 13, 2006... In "Unique Explosion: Gamma-ray burst leads astronomers to supernova" (SN: 3/4/06, p. 133), the author states that the observed supernova was "one of only a handful...heralded by a burst of gamma rays." Isn't that because gamma-ray bursts from...

Say no to drugs.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 13, 2006... I wouldn't allow a child of mine to receive SSRIs for treatment of depression, unless that depression were truly crippling and my child required in patient care and a 24-hour suicide watch ("Prescription for Controversy" SN: 3/18/06, p. 168)....

Corrections.(Correction notice)
May 13, 2006... "Buried Treasures" (SN: 4/29/06, p. 266) had it backwards about the acidity of water seeping into a cave. Water becomes less acidic when it enters a cave and outgases carbon dioxide. Also, the mineral formations called soda straws can grow to...

Seed to Seed: The Secret Life of Plants.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 13, 2006... SEED TO SEED: The Secret Life of Plants NICHOLAS HARBERD In brief diary entries spanning 2004, Harberd reveals his passion for botany as he details his observations of thale-cress--lab scientists' favorite plant--in its natural habitat...

Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 13, 2006... WINDOWS ON NATURE: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History STEPHEN CHRISTOPHER QUINN In some ways, the displays are even better than zoo exhibits. Everything looks perfectly real, but since the mounted...

Who Controls The Internet?: Illusions of Borderless World.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 13, 2006... WHO CONTROLS THE INTERNET? Illusions of a Borderless world JACK GOLDSMITH AND TIM WU The authors contend that over the past few years, the Internet has transformed from a lawless, borderless frontier to a territory under the influence...

What To Eat: An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 13, 2006... WHAT TO EAT: An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating MARION NESTLE Navigating the aisles of warehouse-size supermarkets and making sense of increasingly complicated nutrition labels can bewilder many a food...

The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 13, 2006... THE DEVIL'S DOCTOR: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science PHILIP BALL Philip Theophrastrus Aureolus Bombast von Hohenheim, also known as Paracelsus, was a 16th-century man who, despite venomous derision from...

Bug Zapper: novel drug kills resistant bacteria.(This Week)(discovered the compound, which call platensimycin)
May 20, 2006... A newly recognized compound can wipe out some of the most troublesome antibiotic-resistant bacteria, laboratory tests show. The drug works by sabotaging a microbe's production of fatty acids. Scientists at Merck Research Laboratories in...

Safe from a heavenly doom: gamma-ray bursts not a threat to Earth.(This Week)
May 20, 2006... For pessimists, the heavens offer a host of doomsday scenarios--an asteroid crashing into Earth or deadly cosmic rays raining down on the planet. But at least earthlings don't have to worry about gamma-ray bursts, according to new findings....

Hybrid-driven evolution: genomes show complexity of human-chimp split.(This Week)
May 20, 2006... Not only did the evolutionary parting of human from chimpanzee ancestors occur more recently than had been indicated by previous data, but it also played out over an extended period during which forerunners of people and chimps interbred. ...

Feeling cagey.(This Week)(Brief article)
May 20, 2006... Researchers have discovered that gold can take the shape of nanoscale, hollow cages similar to carbon buckyballs. Lai-Sheng Wang of Washington State University in Richland, Xiao Cheng Zeng of the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, and their...

Jay watch: birds get sneakier when spies lurk.(This Week)
May 20, 2006... In the thief-ridden world of western scrub jays, a bird storing food takes note of any other jay that watches it and later defends the hoard accordingly, says a new study. A difference in hiding tactics showed up in lab tests where birds...

Eye for growth: new protein prompts optic nerve regrowth.(This Week)
May 20, 2006... A protein recently isolated from white blood cells could offer a new way to repair nerve cells damaged by injury or disease. Like most neurons in the central nervous system, those that form the bundle that connects each eye to the brain...

Indy's best: young scientists cross the finish line.(This Week)(2006 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair )
May 20, 2006... Just 2 weeks before race-car enthusiasts will flood Indianapolis for the Indy 500, thousands of high school students zoomed into the city for a more cerebral, yet also lucrative, competition. The 2006 Intel International Science and Engineering...

Now hear this: new research aims to restore lost hearing.
May 20, 2006... It was a matter of life or death. As 14-month-old Peter Steyger lay in a hospital bed stricken with bacterial meningitis, his parents were faced with a critical decision. Doctors could rescue the toddler with intravenous doses of the antibiotic...

Illuminating changes: conventional lightbulbs may soon be obsolete.(Cover story)
May 20, 2006... The first of two parts on lighting's environmental and human impacts In a remote mountain community of Mexico's Sierra Madre, people are tending fields, cooking meals over open fires, and field-testing light-emitting electronics woven into...

Report knocks NASA funding.(ASTRONOMY)(Brief article)
May 20, 2006... The U.S. space agency is sacrificing unmanned science missions in order to fund President Bush's plan to return astronauts to the moon and to complete the International Space Station. Critics of NASA have been making that charge for the past...

Biotech cotton: Less spray but same yield.(AGRICULTURE)(Brief article)
May 20, 2006... Arizona farmers who grow genetically modified cotton can skip some of their usual insecticide spraying. Those crops have the same impact on crawling insects and the same yield as unmodified cotton does, according to a field study. Yves...

Nabbed: culprit of grapefruit juice--drug interaction.(FOOD AND NUTRITION)
May 20, 2006... Drinking grapefruit juice is a medical no-no for people who take any of several widely prescribed drugs. The drink affects how the body metabolizes the medications. Now, researchers have pinned down the class of natural juice compounds that's...

Roads pose growing danger in poor countries.(SCIENCE AND SOCIETY)(Brief article)
May 20, 2006... Although roads are getting safer in many developed countries, traffic accidents are a rising and underestimated killer worldwide, say researchers who have surveyed dozens of recent traffic studies. In some developing countries, including...

Rounding out an insect-eye view.(TECHNOLOGY)
May 20, 2006... A new humanmade version of an insect's compound eye could perform like the real thing. Because of its pinhead size and anticipated low cost, the eye is promising for many applications, its inventors say. Those uses include miniature...

Cancer gene is also important for growth.(GENETICS)(Brief article)
May 20, 2006... A tumor-suppressing gene known as PTEN appears to also control development in immature animals. Like many organisms, the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans pauses its development until conditions are fight for growth. After worms hatch, they...

Three Gorges Dam is affecting ocean life.(ENVIRONMENT)(Brief article)
May 20, 2006... Oceanographic surveys suggest that China's Three Gorges Dam is already influencing biological productivity in the East China Sea, even though the structure is still under construction. The dam, on the Yangtze River, will be the world's...

Remains may be an evolutionary relic.(PALEONTOLOGY)(Brief article)
May 20, 2006... Fossils recently found in southwestern China may be of a lineage that originated long before the Cambrian explosion of biodiversity, when most major groups of animals first appeared in the fossil record. The frondlike animals were up to 7.5...

J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 20, 2006... J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER: A Life ABRAHAM PAIS AND ROBERT P. CREASE At the time of his death in 2000, award-winning author Pais was working on this revealing portrait of one of America's most charismatic and important physicists. Crease...

Out of the Woods: Tales of Resilient Teens.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 20, 2006... OUT OF THE WOODS: Tales of Resilient Teens STUART P. HAUSER, JOSEPH P. ALLEN, AND EVE GOLDEN Between 1978 and 1983, author Hauser took part in a long-term study of teenagers with severe emotional problems, who had been locked in a...

The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 20, 2006... THE EVOLVING WORLD: Evolution in Everyday Life DAVID P. MINDELL The ideas behind evolutionary biology have, since the publication of Darwin's writings, become ingrained in everyday culture. Despite recent arguments against evolution by...

Flowers: How They Changed the World.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 20, 2006... FLOWERS: How They Changed the World WILLIAM C. BURGER Flowering plants provide energy for other living things and are Earth's most significant biomass. This book recounts such impacts and describes flowers' distinctive characteristics and...

Does Measurement Measure Up? How Numbers Reveal and Conceal the Truth.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 20, 2006... DOES MEASUREMENT MEASURE UP? How Numbers Reveal and Conceal the Truth JOHN M. HENSHAW People use measurements to quantify and analyze just about everything: time, weight, sports records, school grades. Henshaw poses tough questions about...

Forget dessert.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 20, 2006... In "Got Data? Consuming calcium, dairy doesn't keep off weight" (SN: 3/18/06, p. 147), you report, "Every 4 years, each volunteer completed a questionnaire about his body weight and dietary habits." Any dieter knows that it is next to...

Speed trap.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
May 20, 2006... "Cosmic Triumph: Satellite confirms birth theory of universe" (SN: 3/18/06, p. 163) states that the early universe expanded "from subatomic scales to the size of a grapefruit in less than a trillionth of a second" or one picosecond. This would...

Corrections.(LETTERS)(Correction notice)
May 20, 2006... "To Leap or Not to Leap" (SN: 4/22/06, p. 248) should have said that a day is now 0.002 second longer, not shorter, than it was a century ago. The bird pictured in "Bird hormone cuts noise distractions" (SN: 5/6/06, p. 285) is a white-crowned...

Burden of abuse: violent partners take mental toll on women.(THIS WEEK)
May 27, 2006... Physical abuse doled out by husbands or male live-in partners contributes substantially to major depression and other mental disorders among women of childbearing age, along-term study finds. In contrast, men subjected to violent abuse by their...

Top-down lowdown: predators shape coastal ecosystem.(THIS WEEK)
May 27, 2006... The health of southern California kelp forests may depend more on the ecosystem's predator population than on the forest's access to nutrients, researchers report. The finding suggests that fishing practices have a profound impact on these...

Open water, open mouths: scuba divers face infection risks.(THIS WEEK)
May 27, 2006... Circling sharks and empty air tanks may haunt scuba divers' imaginations, but ordinary microbes are a far more probable hazard. A new study takes a stab at quantifying the risks that waterborne bacteria and viruses pose to divers. While...

For the birds: new vaccines protect chickens from avian flu.(THIS WEEK)
May 27, 2006... By piggybacking components of strains of avian-influenza vires onto an existing poultry vaccine, scientists have created experimental vaccines that can prevent bird flu in chickens, two studies show. While researchers will need to further...

Big oil, tiny barons: microbes can unleash trapped petroleum.(This Week)
May 27, 2006... Supply shortages have pushed oil prices above $70 per barrel, but nearly 380 billion barrels of crude oil--in the United States alone--are stuck in the pores of rocks or on the surfaces of sand grains. A new study proves the feasibility of...

Lobster hygiene: healthy animals quick to spot another's ills.(This Week)
May 27, 2006... Caribbean spiny lobsters somehow detect and shun potential roommates carrying a virus, even before the infected lobster can pass along the disease, a research team reports. These lobsters, Panulirus argus, often share hiding places. Yet...

Gripping tale: metal oozes in nanotubes' grasp.(This Week)
May 27, 2006... Chalk up another feat of astounding strength for the hollow threads called carbon nanotubes. When they squeeze in on enclosed crystals of hard metals, those substances collapse into thin shafts, an international team of scientists reports. ...

Violent developments: disruptive kids grow into their behavior.(Cover story)
May 27, 2006... Henry was headed for serious trouble. The 15-year-old provoked an endless series of fights at school and frequently bullied gifts. Teachers regularly suspended him for his classroom disruptions. Older students taunted Henry in the hallways by...

Light impacts: hue and timing determine whether rays are beneficial or detrimental.
May 27, 2006... The second of a two-part series on electric lighting and its impacts Erin Chesky was a sleep-troubled teen, typical of many. Despite going to bed early each night, this honor roll student struggled to doze off--sometimes lying awake until...