Science News articles from May 2008

Science News archives from May 2008

Welcome to the new Science News.(FROM THE EDITOR)
May 10, 2008... WITH THIS ISSUE, SCIENCE NEWS opens a new chapter in its tradition of reporting on the world of scientific investigation and discovery. As I recount in an essay (page 30), the magazine's packaging has evolved since its inception in the...

Scientific observations.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Quotation)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... "We... draw conceptual categories around entities that we easily perceive, and in so doing we carve out what seems to us to be reality. The T we create for each of us is a quintessential example of such a perceived or invented reality, and it...

Science past: 50 years ago: from Science News letter, May 10, 1958.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... The first reports on findings from the first two U.S. satellites have been announced.... They included: A mysterious radiation... at heights greater than 600 miles above the earth's surface.... Dr. [James] Van Allen and his colleagues at the...

The (-est).(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... The smallest black hole known is as massive as 3.8 suns, two NASA Goddard Space Flight Center researchers reported in March. The black hole's size is a relic of its origin. It likely formed from the collapse of the core of a massive star. The...

Science future.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)(Calendar)
May 10, 2008... May 16 Scheduled launch date for GLAST, NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope. Visit glast.gsfc.nasa.gov. May 28-June 1 The World Science Festival, an event-filled celebration and exploration of science in modern life, in New York...

SN online.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(www.sciencenews.org. )(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... Get your daily dose of science news at www.sciencenews.org. SN TODAY Your spot for each day's top science stories. SIGHTS & SOUNDS Go beyond words. See a lungless frog, starlings flying in formation and much more. NEW...

Science stats: science jobs grow faster than others.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... [GRAPHIC OMITTED] Each decade, the growth rate of the number of people in science and engineering jobs surpassed that of the overall workforce. SOURCE: NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD, SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING INDICATORS 2008

Rest in peace nanobacteria, you were not alive after all: mystery particles made of minerals and proteins may still cause disease.(STORY ONE)
May 10, 2008... NANOBACTERIA, EXTREMELY tiny "microorganisms" that have sparked controversy and may cause disease, have been declared dead. Again. Some say the nanobacteria were never really alive. Once touted as the world's smallest living organisms, and...

Shifting priorities at the wheel: multitasking while driving may exceed brain's capacity.(Humans)
May 10, 2008... A SPECIAL CORNER OF HELL IS RESERVED for drivers who weave from lane to lane at a crawl while blithely chatting on their cell phones. Even a simple form of multitasking--driving while listening to someone else talk--disrupts the ability to...

Hobbit wars: small islanders show no signs of growth disorder.(Humans)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... COLUMBUS -- DEFENDERS OF A SMALL humanlike species that lived on an Indonesian island over 12,000 years ago have new fossil reconstructions and comparisons to bolster their view. Remains of Homo floresiensis, also referred to as hobbits,...

Elephant kin liked the water: isotopes in tooth fossils add new clues to debate.(Life)(Moeritherium)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... THE ANCIENT KIN OF MODERN ELEPHANTS may have spent much of their time in lakes, rivers or swamps. Creatures in the proboscidean genus Moeritherium have been known for more than a century, but scientists have never agreed about how the...

China was an ancient-ape paradise: excavations uncover oldest known ancestral gibbon remains.(Life)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... COLUMBUS -- EXCAVATIONS near the steep edge of a plateau in southern China have uncovered a trove of ancient ape fossils, including what are being reported as the oldest known remains of ancestral gibbons. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Study decodes papaya genome: tropical fruit tree's DNA has surprisingly few genes.(Life)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... THE TROPICAL TREE WHOSE FRUIT PACKS a vitamin-rich punch has become the fifth flowering plant to reveal its genome. An international team of researchers has unveiled a draft of the catalog of genetic information needed to make papaya. It's...

Beetles portend crisis in Canada: outbreak counters forest's ability to capture carbon.(Life)
May 10, 2008... THE LARGEST OUTBREAK OF MOUNTAIN pine beetles on record is turning a forest in British Columbia from part of the solution into part of the problem in the fight against greenhouse gases. Climate modelers typically count the great boreal...

Triggering autoimmune assaults: mouth bacteria unleash inflammation-inducing protein.(Body & Brain)(phosphoethanolamine dihydroceramide)
May 10, 2008... SAN DIEGO -- OUR BODIES PROVIDE FOOD and shelter for trillions of microbes--bacteria, yeasts and other squatters. Now, researchers report that a few resident species release a substance that can inappropriately rev up the immune system. If this...

Old drug offers new tricks for fighting cancer: DFMO shows promise at extremely low doses.(Body & Brain)(difluoromethylornithine)
May 10, 2008... SAN DIEGO -- A DRUG ONCE ENVISIONED AS a treatment for established cancers might instead help prevent the occurrence of colorectal cancer. Other work suggests the uses for this old drug might extend to a deadly childhood brain cancer. ...

Danger from pig brains.(MEETING NOTES: American Academy of Neurology April 12-17, Chicago)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... Slaughterhouse workers who inhale pig-brain particles risk contracting a nerve-damaging illness. More than 20 people have been diagnosed with the mysterious disease, which causes nondescript pain, weakness, fatigue and possibly paralysis. ...

Blood test for MS.(MEETING NOTES: American Academy of Neurology April 12-17, Chicago)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... Doctors and patients have long hoped for an alternative to the spinal tap, a key test for multiple sclerosis. Now a research team funded by the biotech company Gene Logic Inc. reports possible success in developing a test analyzing blood rather...

A quicker path to Alzheimer's.(MEETING NOTES: American Academy of Neurology April 12-17, Chicago)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... People with a genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's who smoke and drink raise their risk for an earlier onset of the disease, a new study suggests. When combined, those factors can make a seven-year difference, says Ranjan Duara of the Mount...

Black hole once glowed brightly: fluorescing clouds provide clues to its former glory.(Atom & Cosmos)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] JUST OVER 26,000 YEARS AGO, A SLEEPING giant at the center of our galaxy suddenly awoke, spewed several pulses of X-rays and then went back into hibernation. That's the conclusion of a long-term X-ray study of...

Battle over WIMPs goes another round: claimed dark matter find remains controversial.(Atom & Cosmos)
May 10, 2008... OF ALL THE THINGS WORTH ARGUING about in the universe, physicists are once again haggling over a bunch of WIMPs. At a meeting in Venice in April, Rita Bernabei of the University of Rome announced that her team has found further evidence for...

Searching for superEarths: mass and radius may help identify places like home.(Atom & Cosmos)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... ST. LOUIS -- IN THE QUEST TO FIND SOME place just like home, astronomers are exploring a new family of planets beyond the solar system--orbs only a few times heavier than Earth. And they're focused on finding rocky ones. [ILLUSTRATION...

Spiders boost mercury levels: birds eating arachnids get high dose of toxic metal.(Environment)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... IF YOU KNOW AN OLD LADY WHO SWALLOWED a spider, tell her to cough it up. Spiders and other insects living near a mercury-contaminated river contain unusually high levels of the toxic metal, a new study finds. "We think of mercury as an...

Pollution may confuse pollinators: smog dilutes scents needed to guide floral foragers.(Environment)(Brief article)
May 10, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] OZONE AND OTHER CONSTITUENTS OF smog destroy at least some of the floral perfumes that pollinators rely on to find their meals, scientists report. Bees might suffer from these smog constituents, which pollute...

Melt pond falls through ice in Greenland: watching flow sharpens picture of moving glaciers.(Earth)
May 10, 2008... IT TOOK ALMOST A MONTH FOR MELTWATER to accumulate atop Greenland's ice sheet in the summer of 2006. It took only 90 minutes for all that water--a lake so large it could fill New Orleans' Superdome more than 12 times over--to pour through a...

Down with carbon: scientists work to put the greenhouse gas in its place.(carbon dioxide)
May 10, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ONE MORNING EACH WEEK, a scientist takes a stroll on the barren upper slopes of Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano, a basketball-sized glass sphere in hand. At some point, the researcher faces the wind, takes a deep breath,...

Twin fates: sharing the womb with a brother may influence a girl's development.(eating disorder)
May 10, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] KELLY KLUMP IS A CURLY-HAIRED, COMPACT WOMAN WHO IS FASCINATED BY EATING disorders. Her own habits are healthy, but as a high school "peer counselor" she found herself besieged by girls struggling with the addictive...

Change without change: new clothes for the modern media climate, but no departure from traditional purpose for Science News.(ESSAY)(Editorial)
May 10, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] FOURSCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO, A NONPROFIT organization called Science Service began providing dispatches to newspapers on news from the world of science. The following year, by popular demand, some of those...

A Portrait of the Brain.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 10, 2008... A Portrait of the Brain Adam Zeman What you don't know about the brain could fill a book. That's true even if you happen to be a brain surgeon or neuroscientist. Luckily, Zeman, a British neurologist, has painted A Portrait of the...

Titan Unveiled.(SN BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 10, 2008... Titan Unveiled Ralph Lorenz and Jacqueline Mitton Astronomer Lorenz and science writer Mitton provide the details of what we know so far about Saturn and its moons. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Princeton University Press, 2008, 243 p.,...

A Grain of Sand: Nature's Secret Wonder.(SN BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 10, 2008... A Grain of Sand: Nature's Secret Wonder Gary Greenberg Beautiful photos of sand grains up close reveal surprising diversity. Text describes a sand grain's journey from mountain to beach. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Voyageur Press,...

Sports and the brain.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
May 10, 2008... The review of Play Hard, Die Young (SN: 3/22/08, p. 191) discusses gridiron dementia, a real condition of brain damage consistent with repeated blows. Its symptoms are observed in football players. Although the book's subject is football, I...

Microbe maze.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
May 10, 2008... Regarding "Swell, a Pain Lesson" (SN: 2/16/08, p. 101), a recent query in the letters section brings up the hygiene hypothesis. Writer Tina Hesman Saey says that "there is little reason to think that people have fewer bacteria in their...

Back to which basics?(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
May 10, 2008... In "People move like predators" (SN: 3/22/08, p. 190), it would be more accurate to describe a person's behavior as that of a hunter-gatherer, which would reflect a searching and foraging nature rather than the stalking and pursuing...

Science education and the future of humankind.(COMMENT)
May 10, 2008... IN THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES, technology, whose origins go back to pre-history, was largely invention-based. Inventors did not have a basic training in scientific fundamentals. They thrived by gifted intuition, by trial and error, and by a...

Keep your eye on the mouse.(FROM THE EDITOR)
May 24, 2008... IN THE ANCIENT WORLD OF ANALOG media, only the news that fits gets into print. That's especially tragic in the realm of science, where there's more and more news than ever, and less and less space for it in traditional print publications. ...

Scientific observations.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Quotation)(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... "Our home planet is dangerously near a tipping point at which human-made greenhouse gases reach a level where major climate changes can proceed mostly under their own momentum.... The upshot of the combination of inertia and feedbacks is that...

Science past: 50 years ago: from Science News Letter, May 24, 1958.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... ANCIENT SKULL PUZZLES--The 45,000-year-old Neanderthal skull recently assembled from fragments found in Shanidar Cave in Iraq presents a real scientific puzzle to anthropologists because, although his face was very primitive, the back of his...

Science future.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... Through June 15 "Darwin's Garden: An Evolutionary Adventure," at the New York Botanical Garden. Visit www. nybg.org. September 27 Scheduled opening of Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington,...

Science & the public.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... "New Orleans, at the end of the century, will be an island"--literally, predicted Bruce Babbitt, former secretary of the interior, in a talk covered in Janet Raloff's May 5 post. The city won't wash away, he said, but "much like Venice," its...

Sights & sounds.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)
May 24, 2008... My, what big eyes you have. In S&S, reporter Rachel Ehrenberg writes on how look-alike lemurs on Madagascar find mates with song. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Science news for kids.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... Need a primer on climate change for your middle schooler? Read a two-part series about global warming and what can be done about it--and check out more stories aimed at a younger audience--at www.sciencenews. org/sciencenewsforkids.

Digital edition.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... Subscribers can get a sneak peek at the next issue of Science News before it hits mailboxes. Click on Digital Edition under the cover photo on the website.

Stay connected.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)
May 24, 2008... Sign up for SN one of the many choices of e-mail alerts and RSS feeds to have the latest news sent to your inbox.

Science stats: the lowdown on space junk.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK )(Table)(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Debris litters the space around Earth. Dots represent pieces left when rockets and the things they carry explode, collide or weather over time. Total number of pieces China 2750 C.I.S...

Searching for habitability on Red Planet: Phoenix will dredge the Martian landscape with its robotic arm and onboard instruments.(STORY ONE)
May 24, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A NEW EMISSARY FROM EARTH IS SET TO parachute onto Mars on May 25, making it the first craft to land on the Red Planet's north polar region and the first since the 1970s built to find life-friendly places. NASA's...

Jaw breaker: extinct hominid chewed softly, carried big teeth.(Humans)
May 24, 2008... NUTCRACKER MAN, A MEMBER OF THE human evolutionary family best known for having massive jaws, peglike teeth and huge chewing muscles, was just an old softy. Although most researchers have assumed that this extinct relative evolved to eat nuts,...

Mental fluidity: training improves scores on problem-solving tests.(Humans)(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... MANY SCIENTISTS HAVE LONG REGARDED fluid intelligence--general reasoning skills and problem-solving proficiency--as a genetically ingrained, relatively stable trait that varies from person to person. But a relatively brief memory-training...

Blind might one day see, suggest new studies in humans and mice: genetic tricks offer a light at the end of the tunnel.(Body & Brain)
May 24, 2008... SEEING THE LIGHT MIGHT NOW GET easier for people with a rare, genetic form of blindness. And studies on blind mice offer hope that people who have lost all the light processing cells in their eyes might not have to stay in the dark. Gene...

DNA change no good for diabetics: increased protein production stimulates blood vessel growth and may lead to blindness and kidney failure.(Body & Brain)
May 24, 2008... A TWEAK TO A DIABETIC'S DNA COULD TIP the balance toward blindness and kidney failure, a new study shows. Natural variation in just a single base pair--letters of the genetic alphabet--raises levels of erythropoietin, one of the proteins...

Treat 'em.(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... Many physicians don't treat high blood pressure in very elderly people who are in otherwise good health, worrying that medication hurts more than helps. But Nigel Beckett, a geriatrician at Imperial College London, shows this perception may be...

Fat cells gain weight.(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... Even when people lose weight, they don't lose fat cells. The cells just shrink. Kirsty Spalding of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and her colleagues figured out the birth dates of fat cells in adults. The team reported online May 4 in...

Targeting Alzheimer's.(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... Inhibiting the enzyme beta-secretase could neutralize an Alzheimer's suspect--the peptide amyloid-beta. A team in Germany has made a compound that anchors an inhibitor to a cell's membrane. When it was tested in mice, amyloid-beta production...

New species could fill big shoes once worn by island's dispersers: experiments suggest 'rewilding' for plant survival.(Life)(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... MISSING LINKS IN ECOSYSTEMS DISRUPTED by extinctions could be restored by introducing species that perform the same function, new field tests suggest. Mauritius, a remote island in the Indian Ocean, lost many of its creatures after...

Screaming bats make big noise: high-frequency sounds louder than fire alarms.(Life)(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BATS USING SOUND TO FIND THEIR WAY--and their food--in the dark boom louder than home fire alarms. Fortunately all that noise stays at frequencies too high for human hearing, or bats would drive people batty. ...

For food's ecological impact, meat means more than miles: 'buying local' has small effect on greenhouse gases.(Environment)
May 24, 2008... BUYING LOCAL CERTAINLY REDUCES THE miles food goes before we eat. But consumers aiming to shrink their ecological footprints will get more bang for their environmental buck by eating less red meat and dairy, reports a new study. The analysis...

Warming trend bad for insects: hotter weather threatens cold-blooded creatures too.(Environment)(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... INSECTS, TURTLES AND OTHER CREATURES that use their environments to regulate their body temperatures may find themselves in hot water as global temperatures increase, a new study finds. In the tropics, many of these animals are already...

Supermassive black hole says sayonara to its galaxy: evidence supports simulations suggesting that gravitational recoil can trigger ejection.(Atom & Cosmos)
May 24, 2008... KICKED OUT OF ITS HOME GALAXY BY a gravitational rocket, a supermassive black hole roams through intergalactic space, a solitary glutton seeking a fresh supply of gas and stars for its next meal. It sounds like science fiction, but...

Flooring the cosmic accelerator: new measure of dark energy suggests 'Big Rip' for universe.(Atom & Cosmos)(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... BALTIMORE -- LET 'ER RIP! If cosmologist Will Percival of the University of Portsmouth in England is right, some 60 billion years from now every molecule and atom will be torn asunder by a runaway version of what astronomers call dark...

Down with the transistor: new 'memristor' could radically transform computer chips.(atter & Energy)
May 24, 2008... AFTER GOING UNCHALLENGED FOR decades, the transistor's supremacy could come to an end. Researchers have demonstrated a new type of electronic component that could replace transistors as the building blocks of computer chips and lead to faster,...

The shape of Beethoven's Ninth: math, music and multidimensional geometry intersect.(Matter & Energy)(Brief article)
May 24, 2008... FAMILIAR RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SETS of musical notes, such as transposition between chords, directly translate into geometrical structures such as this Mobius strip--where each dot represents a whole class of equivalent two-note chords--or into...

Epic genetics: genes' chemical clothes may underlie the biology behind mental illness.(Cover story)
May 24, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In research circles the debate is settled. Psychiatric illnesses are disorders rooted in biology. As convincing as the evidence is, mysteries still fog our understanding of mental illnesses. Yes, the disorders...

Scientists get a 2nd life: online world opens up new ways to do and learn about science.(Website overview)
May 24, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] To track down neuroscientist Corey Hart, you could stop by his laboratory, located on the second floor of Drexel University's medical building in Philadelphia. Or, you could visit the lab of Luciftias Neurocam,...

Science in the city: first-ever festival explores the science in culture, arts and life.(World Science Festival in New York City)
May 24, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Scientists play an important role as myth busters, yet they seem unable to shatter one common fiction: "People think scientists are crazy white guys with frizzy hair in lab coats who don't communicate with normal...

Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 24, 2008... Microcosm: E. coil and the New Science of Life Carl Zimmer [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When science writer Zimmer looks into a petri dish teeming with E. coli, he sees himself, humanity and all life. In Microcosm, Zimmer traces the...

Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them.(SN BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 24, 2008... Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them Clifford Pickover [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] How the works of these and other great minds have changed humankind's understanding of the universe. Oxford Univ....

Winter Trees.(SN BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 24, 2008... Winter Trees Carole Gerber [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In this picture book, a child uses sight and touch to identify seven common trees, even after they've lost their leaves. Charlesbridge Publishing, 2008, 30 p., $15.95.

Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin.(SN BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 24, 2008... Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin Lawrence Weinstein and John A. Adam [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Learn to use simple arithmetic to approximate anything. Princeton Univ. Press, 2008, 300...

Manipulative Monkeys: The Capuchins of Lomas Barbudal.(SN BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 24, 2008... Manipulative Monkeys: The Capuchins of Lomas Barbudal Susan Perry [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Primatologists follow the social lives of these big-brained Costa Rican monkeys. Harvard Univ. Press, 2008, 358 p., $45.

Newton: Ackroyd's Brief Lives.(SN BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
May 24, 2008... Newton: Ackroyd's Brief Lives Peter Ackroyd [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The book promises a personal history of Isaac Newton. Ackroyd also wrote Shakespeare: The Biography and London: The Biography. Nan A. Talese, 2008, 176 p.,...

Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century.(Brief article)(Book review)
May 24, 2008... Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century Arthur MacGregor [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Chock-full of unicorn horns (narwhal teeth), griffin claws (antelope antlers), leopard...

Plants and rheumatism.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
May 24, 2008... Some medical specialists in the field of rheumatology might find it useful to review the work of Ann M. Hirsch and Angie Lee, mentioned in the article by Susan Milius (SN: 4/12/08, p. 235). It describes a process in plant fixation of nitrogen...

A pervasive hidden influence.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
May 24, 2008... "Dad's Hidden Influence" (SN: 3/29/08, p. 200) states that, "Fathers 40 and older have an increased chance that their children will develop complex disorders such as autism or schizophrenia." Our society's trend for couples to wait until they...

Keep reverence in its place.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
May 24, 2008... Hats off to Ms. Ehrenberg on her "Digging that Maya blue" piece (SN: 3/1/08, p. 134). She didn't sugarcoat (in a politically correct manner) ancient human sacrifices as admirable religious rituals. It's bemusing that some readers feel that the...

Comments on the new Science News.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
May 24, 2008... Eager to see the new format, but really liked the "weekly" publications. I hope the fortnightly editions are as informative. Most importantly, don't drop the Letters, as they are the first thing I read (even though you put them in the back of...

Good medicine (usually).(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
May 24, 2008... Regarding "Raising doubts about Crohn's treatment" (SN: 3/8/08,p. 157): My sister was diagnosed with Crohn's disease two years ago at the age of 46. She was given high doses of prednisone, which did not relieve her symptoms and which also made...

Ah-ha-ha-ha.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
May 24, 2008... In your article "Road to Eureka" (SN: 3/22/08. p. 184), you discuss "Aha!" moments. The same sort of lateral thinking and feelings occur when you "get" a joke. In fact, in parallel to when the subjects were given hints in the research your...

Universal recipe.(Feedback)(Letter to the editor)
May 24, 2008... "State of the Universe: Microwave glow powers cosmic insights" (SN: 3/15/08, p. 163) argues convincingly and categorically that the contents of the universe consist of 23.2 percent dark matter, 72.1 percent dark energy and the rest ordinary...

John Wheeler (1911-2008): quantum theory poses reality's deepest mystery.(COMMENT)
May 24, 2008... Before his death in April, John Archibald Wheeler was one of the few remaining living legends of physics, from the generation born before the development of quantum mechanics. Wheeler collaborated with Niels Bohr, conversed often with Albert...