Science News articles from November 2003

Science News archives from November 2003

Days may be numbered for two fire retardants.(Flaming Out?)(products made from polybrominated diphenyl ethers)
November 1, 2003... This August, at a meeting of Environmental Protection Agency scientists who are studying emerging pollutants, one family of chemicals unexpectedly stole the show: brominated flame retardants. Recently slated for bans in Europe and California,...

Galaxy map reveals dark business as usual.(Cosmic Survey)(dark matter)
November 1, 2003... The most precise map of galaxies has confirmed that much of the cosmos is in the dark. The map, which covers 6 percent of the sky and includes 200,000 galaxies recorded by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, supports previous evidence that most of...

Drug disables enzyme from hepatitis C virus.(Antiviral Advance)
November 1, 2003... It's odd to think that anyone would look upon a person infected with the AIDS virus with even a tinge of envy, but some of the estimated 170 million people worldwide infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) may do just that. Whereas AIDS...

Early view biases spider's mate choice.(First Impressions)
November 1, 2003... A first date, even if it fizzles, can make a big difference to a wolf spider. If an almost-grown-up female's last impression of a suitor is his sexy leg-waving display, she won't mate with him just then, but she'll grow up with a...

Lost asteroid reappears, bringing surprises.(Out of Hiding)(Hermes)
November 1, 2003... A team of astronomers has spotted Hermes, an asteroid that disappeared into the night after a close flyby of Earth in 1937. Ever since, some researchers have wondered-and worried--about the asteroid's path. Last month, scientists finally found...

Scarlet symbols emerge in Israeli cave.(Stone Age Code Red)
November 1, 2003... The Qafzeh Cave in Israel contains skeletal remains of modern Homo sapiens that are more than 90,000 years old, as well as more-recent signs of human occupation. Investigators now say that red ocher found in Qafzeh Cave's oldest sections...

Ocean maybe melting ice shelf from below.(Blame the Sea?)
November 1, 2003... Significant portions of a large Antarctic ice shelf just south of one that suddenly broke apart in February 2002 are rapidly thinning and may suffer a similar, catastrophic demise in less than a century, scientists say. Satellite...

Carpet of carbon nanotubes cleans itself.(Water Repellency Goes Nano)
November 1, 2003... The amazing water-shedding ability of the lotus leaf has long inspired materials scientists. The leaf's wax-coated microstructures cause rain droplets to bounce off the surface, carrying away with them dust particles and other contaminants. In...

A spin through space-time: a long-planned test of Einstein's theory is poised for takeoff. (.
November 1, 2003... A satellite designed to test one of the more twisted predictions on Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity is finally at its launch site after 40 years of preparation. The probe will look for evidence of a gravitational effect known as...

Beast buddies: do animals have friends?
November 1, 2003... Meredith Bashaw says she started looking for social attachments among giraffes because they weren't supposed to have any. She needed a group to contrast with the more sociable animals she was examining as a beginning graduate student several...

Clays catalyze life?(Evolution)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Billions of years ago, the very first cells emerged and gave rise to life on Earth. How these ancient cells formed has been a mystery. Now, a team of evolutionary biologists suggests how clay--perhaps near hydrothermal springs on the ocean...

Cancer drug might fight Alzheimer's.(Biomedicine)(imatinib mesylate, or Gleevec)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... A drug for leukemia and colon cancer might also inhibit the formation of the waxy plaques found in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease, a study of animals shows. The drug, imatinib mesylate, which is marketed as Gleevec, is an enzyme...

New type of material that heat can't bloat.(Physics)(metallic compound)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Most substances expand when warmed. That can be bad, especially in devices such as precision telescopes, whose components must maintain their shapes across a wide temperature range. Now, scientists have discovered a metallic compound that nixes...

California acts on plastic additive.(Environment)(state adds to list of reproductive toxicants)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Late last week, California added diethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP)--a compound used to make plastics flexible--to the list of known reproductive toxicants regulated under the state statute called Proposition 65. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) typically...

Tracks suggest chase, capture, and after-meal respite.(Paleontology)(early reptile)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... The still life portrayed in a 315-million-year-old set of fossil footprints discovered in southwestern Indiana is a poignant vignette of life, death, and satiation. The 1.3-meter-long, S-shaped trackway preserves the footprints left by two...

Role of gastroliths in digestion questioned.(Paleobiology)(dinosaur physiology)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... The discovery of large, polished stones inside the body cavities of some fossils of large plant-eating dinosaurs led many paleontologists to believe that the gastroliths--Greek for "stomach stones"-aided the creatures' digestion by grinding up...

Healed scars tag T. rex as predator.(Paleontology)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Although Tyrannosaurus rex has a reputation as a fierce predator, the evidence to back up that notoriety has been both rare and debatable. Now, a fossil Triceratops skull with healed bone scars may compel paleontologists to give T. rex its due....

Ancient atmosphere was productive.(Paleoecology)
November 1, 2003... How could ancient landscapes have provided all the vegetation needed to nourish massive herds of hungry, multiton dinosaurs? New laboratory experiments suggest that in the era just before the dinosaurs went extinct, extra carbon dioxide in the...

Best Trees for Your Garden.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ALLEN PATERSON While most people focus on low-growing shrubs, ground covers, and flowers, Paterson invites everyone to look up and appreciate the value of thoughtfully placed trees within a landscape. Focusing on how trees affect the...

Beyond Genetics: Putting the Power of DNA to Work in Your Life.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... GLENN MCGEE The editor of The American Journal of Bioethics surveys the potential effects of genomics on our lives within the next 20 years or so. For instance, McGee predicts that by 2010, pharmaceuticals will be customized to groups of...

Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... NANCY S. SEASHOLES Remarkably, nearly one-sixth of Boston is built on filled-in rivers and swamps. Seasholes speculates that these 5,250-plus acres of fill are more than may be found in any other North American city. The process of...

King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... DAVID R. MONTGOMERY Today, the salmon is an icon of the Pacific Northwest. Not so long ago, however, people would have just as readily associated the fish with the bounty of rivers and streams in New England and Great Britain. The decline...

Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... HENRY PETROSKI Few people sing the praises of engineers. Even fewer do it as well as Petroski, whose previous tributes include To Engineer Is Human and The Evolution of Useful Things. In this celebratory tome, he turns away from the...

Hard lesson.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... I read with interest "Coronary calcium may predict death risk" (SN: 9/13/03, p. 174). Can you tell me what contributes to these deposits in arteries? It's not ingestion of calcium, at least in people with normal kidney function, says Paolo...

Subsonic booms.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... There is a striking similarity in the wave patterns of the ash plume on the cover of the Sept. 13 issue (for "Danger in the Air: Volcanoes have a long reach," SN: 9/13/03, p. 168) and those in the gas of the Perseus Cluster ("A Low Note in...

Who's to know?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... It's very appealing to think that a noninvasive test could pick up the earliest signs of cancers or cardiovascular disease ("To Your Health? Controversy surrounds whole-body scans--a costly screen for silent threats," SN: 9/20/03, p. 184)....

Correction.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
November 1, 2003... Correction In "Centenarian Advantage: Some old folks make cholesterol in big way," (SN: 10/18/03, p. 243), the full name for the gene CETP should have been given as cholesteryl ester transfer protein.

Cast-iron foot: undersea snail has mineral armor.
November 8, 2003... An as-yet-unnamed species of snail living around hydrothermal vents deep beneath the Indian Ocean bears an unusual suit of armor forged from the dissolved minerals spewing into its seafloor habitat. The sides of the snail's foot are covered...

Hot and heavy star birth: young cosmos delivers massive stars.
November 8, 2003... Aided by a gravitational zoom lens, astronomers have discovered the hottest, brightest, and most crowded star-forming region observed so far. Ablaze with a million newborn stars, the Lynx arc, named after the constellation in which it resides,...

Getting back to normal: protein enables the liver to regenerate quickly.
November 8, 2003... The liver is resilient. Surgeons removing a tumor, for example, can cut out as much as two-thirds of the liver, and the organ will rapidly grow back to its original size. A sugar-laden protein called stem cell factor (SCF) drives this...

Frosty Florida: spread of agriculture may promote freezes.
November 8, 2003... Sunny southern Florida seems like a perfect place to grow fruits and vegetables, even in the winter. But the 20th-century transformation of what had been wetlands into croplands might have had unintended consequences. The shift has made the...

Forgetting to remember: emotion robs memory while reviving it.
November 8, 2003... Emotionally charged events often seem particularly memorable. But this vivid recall may come at a cost. A new study in England suggests that the same biological process that aids recall of emotional experiences also blocks memories of what...

Calcium makes germs cluster: ion dilution leads cholera bacteria to disperse.
November 8, 2003... A chain of sugars on the surface of cholera-causing bacteria enables the pathogens to clump together in seawater and yet scatter in fresh water, new data suggest. Microbiologists propose that the dispersal facilitates seasonal outbreaks of...

Not-so-great hunter: said the spider to the fly: eek! I'm outta here.(brown recluse spider food habits)
November 8, 2003... Despite the general image of spiders as avid hunters, brown recluses in recent laboratory tests typically preferred dead prey to live ones. Other species of spiders have been known to scavenge now and then, but the brown recluse may be the...

Chemical reaction: two flame retardants to phase out in 2004.(Brief Article)
November 8, 2003... On Monday, the sole U.S. manufacturer of two flame retardants pledged to cease making both products next year. The firm had initiated discussions with the Environmental Protection Agency about a potential phase-out just last month (SN: 11/1/03,...

The shape of space: have cosmologists glimpsed signs that the universe is bounded?
November 8, 2003... Gaze deep into the night sky, and space appears to extend infinitely far in all directions. Given such a view, it's mind-boggling to think that space might be bounded. Yet, just as the flat-seeming Earth is in fact a sphere, infinite-seeming...

Martian invasion: probing lively puzzles on the red planet.(Mars)
November 8, 2003... Just 2 months ago, Mars loomed high in the sky, its ruddy countenance so close that anyone with a backyard telescope could make out the planet's white south-polar cap and a central smudge known as Syrtis Major. Not in 60,000 years had Mars and...

Seals' meals, plastic pieces and all.(Environment)(Brief Article)
November 8, 2003... Bite-size pieces of plastic chipped from wave-battered consumer products work their way up marine food chains, suggest researchers examining fur seals in Australia. The oceans are awash in plastic flotsam, and scientists have long studied...

Bone-dry Mars?(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
November 8, 2003... Finding only trace amounts of carbonate minerals on Mars isn't the only strike against the hypothesis that most of the Red Planet was once wet and warm (see p. 298). The presence of large amounts of olivine, a mineral that undergoes rapid...

Underwater balancing act.(Materials Science)(physical effects of changing inner ear structure of zebra fish)(Brief Article)
November 8, 2003... Tweaking the structure of crystals nestled in the inner ears of zebrafish can throw the fish off balance, biologists have found. During development, proteins guide the assembly of calcium carbonate molecules into tiny crystal called otoliths....

POPs treaty enacted.(Science & Society)(Protocol on Persistent Organic Pollutants)(Brief Article)
November 8, 2003... On Oct. 23, a new international treaty--the Protocol on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)--went into effect, although the United States hasn't signed on. Brokered under the aegis of the United Nations, the POPs treaty calls for reduction or...

Pollutants shape baby-gator gonads.(Toxicology)(Brief Article)
November 8, 2003... Over the past decade, comparisons of alligators from two Florida lakes--the relatively pristine Woodruff and the pesticide-laden Apopka--have turned up numerous reproductive impairments in the Apopka animals. Low hatching rates, abnormal...

Sewage linked to fish-gender quirks.(Epidemiology)(Brief Article)
November 8, 2003... During dry spells, the water in some streams can come mostly from municipal sewage-treatment plants. A new study finds reproductive impairments among fish residing in such waters. Alan Vajda and his colleagues at the University of Colorado...

UV-pollutant combo hits tadpoles hard.(Environment)(ultraviolet light rays)(Brief Article)
November 8, 2003... Many of the studies documenting a global decline in amphibians have linked the shrinking populations with exposure to excessive ultraviolet (UV) sunlight or to pollutants, especially ones with a hormonal effect. Biologists now find that...

Soy compounds thwart estrogen.(Endocrinology)(Brief Article)
November 8, 2003... Although soybeans have gained renown as a source of the isoflavones genistein and daidzein, which can mimic the activity of the hormone estrogen, those same compounds occasionally have the opposite effect and block estrogen's activity. Now, a...

Common To This Country: Botanical Discoveries of Lewis and Clark.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 8, 2003... Today, many people take Echinacea to ward off a cold--a remedy that seems to be ancient in its heritage. However, before Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's famed 1084-to-1806 expedition, the substance's source, the coneflower, was unknown. It...

How To Dunk a Doughnut: The Science of Everyday Life.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 8, 2003... A common refrain among schoolchildren is, "Why do we have to know this?" That's the question Fisher attempts to answer in these pages. He shows how science applies to everyday activities, ranging from boiling an egg to having sex. In the...

Protecting America's Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 8, 2003... In the late 1800s, foodstuffs sold at market were regularly contaminated, adulterated, or rotting. Ingredients in medicines were often diluted, faked, or mixed with dangerous substances. In response, Congress established the Food and Drug...

The Moons of Jupiter.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 8, 2003... Four hundred years ago, Galileo Galilei first spied Jupiter through his telescope. Fourteen years ago, NASA launched a space probe named in Galileo's honor to orbit the planet and send back images of it and its moons. This album features more...

The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of its Greatest Inventors.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 8, 2003... Beginning with Copernicus and the shift from mysticism to reason, Gribbin tracks 50O years of Western-science history through the life stories of the people who charted the course. The text is enlivened by anecdotes that define the characters...

Early immigrants, earlier.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 8, 2003... The multiple-origin theory of ancient New World immigration reported in "Continental Survivors: Baja skulls shake up American ancestry" (SN: 9/6/03, p. 150) has a long and respectable scholarly history, though it's tarnished from time to time...

Link's no lock.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 8, 2003... Multiple sclerosis (MS) is considered to be an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that attacks the myelin sheath around neurons. If there were a relationship between myelin and psychiatric illnesses, as suggested in "DNA Tie for...

Error bars get no respect.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 8, 2003... In your article on experimental hints of a new subatomic particle ("Particle decays hint at new matter," SN: 9/20/03, p. 189), three values are quoted for a particular charge-parity violation, all with error bar. Given the large uncertainties...

Illuminating.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 8, 2003... What would sessile organisms do with information provided by the light from "their meals" ("Channeling light in the deep sea," SN: 9/20/03, p. 190)? Just because spicules on a sea sponge transmit photons doesn't mean that that's their function....

Milky Way gobbles its closest known neighbor.(Chow Down!)(Canis Major dwarf galaxy)
November 15, 2003... Astronomers have discovered that the Milky Way is shredding a tiny galaxy into elongated streams of stars and claiming them for itself. At 42,000 light-years from our galaxy's center, the distorted body stands as the Milky Ways closest galactic...

Alaskan horses shrank, then disappeared.(Northern Extinction)
November 15, 2003... Toward the end of the last ice age, a group of horse species that lived in Alaska shrank in body size over several millennia before going extinct. That finding implicates changing environmental conditions as the stimulus for equine die-offs in...

Acoustically, people resemble large eggs.(Humpty-dumpty Effect)
November 15, 2003... Using a sound-based scanning technique to determine the shapes of moving creatures and other objects, an international team of scientists has found that the human form bounces sound waves as if each person were a huge, elongated chicken egg....

Sniffing activates the mind's nose.(Whiffs of Perception)
November 15, 2003... A rose by any other name smells as sweet, even when you only conjure up its fragrance in your mind. That's because people use their noses to sniff imaginary as well as real aromas, and the mere act of sniffing scentless air kick-starts odor...

Polymer materials store data permanently.(Plastic Memories)
November 15, 2003... In their quest for alternatives to silicon, chip manufacturers are increasingly turning their attention to plastic. Low-cost, easily manufactured polymers that conduct electricity could revolutionize electronics, they say. Now, researchers at...

Pesticide chlorpyrifos affects heart and liver cells.(Not Just Neurotoxic)
November 15, 2003... A pesticide known to be toxic to the brain at high doses may have subtle effects throughout the body, researchers suggest. They have found abnormalities in heart and liver tissues of animals exposed during early development to chlorpyrifos. ...

Model predicts too-wet winter refuges.(Will Climate Change Depose Monarchs?)
November 15, 2003... A computer analysis suggests that climate change could ruin the current Mexican overwintering sites for monarch butterflies and perhaps wipe out the insect's populations in eastern North America. While monarchs that summer in the western...

Micro sculptors: tiny RNAs mold the development of leaves.
November 15, 2003... Although you may not feel like admitting it as you rake them into trash bags, leaves are works of art. Their brilliant colors and elegant shapes have attracted and inspired artists. Each leaf assumes its appearance and operations through a...

Attack of the rock-eating microbes! Some bacteria break down minerals, while others make them.
November 15, 2003... Geologists are studying bacteria nowadays. It's not that the rock hounds have gone soft. Instead, they've found that geological processes once attributed solely to simple inorganic chemistry have microbial fingerprints all over them. In rocky...

Bioengineered crops have mixed eco effects.(Environment)(Brief Article)
November 15, 2003... An unusually large research project in Great Britain has revealed that growing beets and canola that had been genetically modified to resist herbicides lowers the abundance of other plant species and certain insect groups that typically grow...

Europe's Iceman was a valley guy.(Anthropology)(Brief Article)
November 15, 2003... Hikers in the Alps took a big step back in time in 1991, when they came upon a man's frozen, mummified body. Scientists have now tracked the geographic origins of the 5,200-year-old Iceman to an area encompassing a few valleys about 37 miles...

Chronicling a war of beetle vs. leaf.(Biology)(Brief Article)
November 15, 2003... A rare meshing of family trees may reveal an ancient arms race between plants that deploy poisons and the beeries that deploy metabolic or behavioral countermeasures so they can eat the leaves anyway. It's been tricky to find evidence that...

Laser beam powers flying machine.(Technology)(Brief Article)
November 15, 2003... A NASA-led engineering team announced on Oct. 9 that it has flown a lightweight, remote-controlled aircraft that receives power in flight from a ground-based laser. Theoretically, such a plane would never have to land for refueling. Such drones...

The good side of a viral infection?(Microbiology)(Brief Article)
November 15, 2003... A gene linked to asthma and allergies also has a role in hepatitis A viral infections, according to a new study. This unexpected discovery has investigators speculating that a past infection with the hepatitis A virus may protect some people...

Sound of the fury.(Astronomy)(recording of solar storm emissions)(Brief Article)
November 15, 2003... The current barrage of solar storms pummeling Earth hasn't harmed power grids on our planet or damaged satellites, but it's generated a lot of buzz. On Oct. 28, the Cassini spacecraft recorded the radio emissions of one of these flares. The...

Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn and Why they Need to Play More and Memorize Less.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 15, 2003... KATHY HIRSH-PASEK AND ROBERTA MICHNICK GOLINKOFF, WITH DIANE EYER Numerous products target parents trying to jumpstart their infants' intellectual development. Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff are two developmental psychologists who argue that the...

In the Beginning was the Worm: Finding the Secrets of Life in a Tiny Hermaphrodite.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 15, 2003... ANDREW BROWN The nematode worm has only 959 cells, yet it is one of the most intensely studied and scientifically documented animals on Earth. In Caenorhabditis elegans, scientists discovered the phenomenon of programmed cell death, which...

Magnificient Mars.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 15, 2003... KEN CROSWELL This volume includes the stunning images to be expected in an oversize, coffee-table book. In this case, they display the Red Planet's striking topography. More surprising is the depth of the captions that weave a...

The Seventy Great Mysteries of Ancient Egypt.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 15, 2003... BILL MANLEY, ED. For 200 years, modern people have studied the culture of Egyptians who lived up to 5,000 years ago. This beautifully illustrated guide considers past and continuing mysteries concerning pyramids, tombs, pharaohs, queens,...

Six Modern Plagues: And How We Are Causing Them.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 15, 2003... MARK JEROME WALTERS Epidemics such as severe acute respiratory syndrome and mad cow disease make headlines around the world and stymie epidemiologists and physicians. In considering these diseases, as well as AIDS, hantavirus, Lyme...

What's fair?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 15, 2003... I suggest that we view the results described in "Unfair Trade: Monkeys demand equitable exchanges" (SN: 9/20/03, p. 181) as indicating that humans frequently act like monkeys, not vice versa. Further, what is being measured as fairness may...

Short-term limitation.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 15, 2003... "Faulty Memory: Long-term immunity isn't always beneficial" (SN: 9/27/03, p. 196) makes a common error. Whereas chicken pox is caused by one virus, a "cold" is a set of symptoms that can be caused by more than 200 distinct viruses. A better...

Corrections.(Correction Notice)
November 15, 2003... The last sentence of "Healed scars tag T. rex as a predator" (SN : 11/1/03, p. 286) shouldn't have said that Tyrannosaurus rex was the only meat eater in the ecosystem described. T.rex was the only meat eater that could have left the bite marks...

Rebuilding the heart: marrow cells boost cardiac recovery.(This Week)
November 22, 2003... Experimental therapy that infuses a person's bone marrow cells into his or her damaged heart tissue is showing early success, scientists report. First tried in patients 2 years ago, the technique is designed to stimulate the growth of new,...

Pieces of a pulverizer? Sediment fragments may be from killer space rock.(This Week)
November 22, 2003... Scientists sifting through ancient sediments laid down just after Earth's most devastating episode of extinctions may have found minuscule fragments of the massive extraterrestrial object suspected to have caused the catastrophe. About 250...

No assembly required: DNA brings carbon nanotube circuits in line.(This Week)
November 22, 2003... By harnessing the binding patterns of DNA and proteins, researchers have devised an efficient way of making carbon-nanotube transistors. The new technique offers the possibility of assembling nanotubes into complex circuits that could...

Quantum pileup: ultracold molecules meld into oneness.(This Week)
November 22, 2003... Two independent teams of physicists have coaxed molecules into an extraordinary state of ultracold matter previously demonstrated only with atoms. In each of the new experiments, the researchers created minuscule gas clouds with an amazing...

Bias bites back: racial prejudice may sap mental control.(This Week)
November 22, 2003... Racial bigotry creates undeniable hardships for its targets. Such prejudice may cut two ways, though. A provocative new study suggests that intolerance undermines the mental resources of biased individuals when they interact with those whom...

Giant picture of a giant planet.(This Week)(photograph of Jupiter from Cassini)(Brief Article)(Illustration)
November 22, 2003... Saturn-bound Cassini captured this arresting view, the sharpest global portrait of Jupiter ever produced, as the spacecraft passed within 10 million kilometers of the planet on Dec. 29, 2000. Realeases by NASA last week, this true-color...

Whales of distinction: old specimens now declared a new species.(This Week)
November 22, 2003... Japanese scientists have named a new category of living baleen whales to explain a series of puzzling specimens that has been accumulating since 1976. Members of the just-identified species, Balaenoptera omurai, look like fin whales but...