Science News articles from November 2006

Science News archives from November 2006

Worthless waters: by midcentury, seas' value may be drained.
November 4, 2006... The biological riches of the oceans will be spent within decades if current trends continue. A global analysis of marine ecology predicts that wild seafood will effectively disappear by midcentury. "People have fished for as long as we've...

A swarm of umbrellas vs. global warming: astronomer thinks small to save Earth.(Roger Angel)
November 4, 2006... Some wives ask their husbands to take out the garbage. Roger Angel's wife asked him to get rid of global warming. Prompted by her plea, Angel, an astronomer and acclaimed telescope-mirror designer at the University of Arizona in Tucson,...

Helping hands: brief rehab method aids arm activity after stroke.
November 4, 2006... Stroke survivors who have difficulty using an arm or a hand experience lasting mobility gains after completing an unusual 2-week rehabilitation program, a new study finds. Constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) exercises a weakened...

Dribble quibble: experiments find that new basketball gets slick.(Brief article)
November 4, 2006... A dispute in professional basketball about a new ball has bounced its way into a physics lab. A study launched last month at the University of Texas at Arlington compares a controversial plastic ball introduced in preseason games this summer by...

L'Chaim: wine compound lengthens mouse lives.(resveratrol )
November 4, 2006... A chemical famous as a constituent of red wine appears to increase the life spans and boost the well-being of mice that haven't followed the healthiest of lifestyles, according to new research. The finding marks the first time that the...

Flow west, young river: ancient Amazon ran opposite today's route.
November 4, 2006... The forerunner of the mighty Amazon ran from east to west, a new analysis of rocks laid down by that ancient river suggests. About one-fifth of all the fresh water that reaches the world's oceans today does so via the Amazon. That river now...

Rejuvenating observatory: green light given for space telescope repairs.(Hubble Space Telescope to be repaired)(Brief article)
November 4, 2006... After 3 years of uncertainty following the Columbia disaster, NASA this week gave the go-ahead for a shuttle mission to carry astronauts to refurbish the 16-year-old Hubble Space Telescope and to install new detectors that would vastly improve...

Abated breath: serotonin problems may contribute to SIDS.(sudden infant death syndrome )
November 4, 2006... Babies who die of sudden infant death syndrome usually appear to thrive right up to their last moments. It often seems as if the babies simply forgot to breathe. Even autopsies have failed to reveal abnormalities associated with SIDS....

The cancer of Dorian Gray: is growing old an inescapable cost of averting malignancy?
November 4, 2006... Dorian Gray, the everlasting dandy of Oscar Wilde's novel, halted aging. Rather than his body growing old, his portrait suffered the insults of time. In recent years, biologists have created real-life Dorian Grays: mice that don't show certain...

Ballot roulette: computer scientists and mathematicians look for better ways to vote.
November 4, 2006... Two months ago, in primaries for governor and congressional and state legislative seats in Maryland, many trips to the polls became painful experiences. At hundreds of precincts in Montgomery County, for instance, new touch-screen voting...

First teleportation between light and matter.(Brief article)
November 4, 2006... Atoms tend to stay put, but light is always on the move. Physicists would like to exploit those qualities to make information-processing devices in which atoms store information and light shuttles it around (SN: 4/3/99, p. 220). In a step...

Unnatural success.( platensimycin discovered)(Brief article)
November 4, 2006... Chemists report the first synthesis of a promising antibiotic that other researchers recently discovered in nature. With the recipe in hand, scientists can pursue modifications that might make the compound more effective. Earlier this...

Jovian storm grows stormier.(Brief article)
November 4, 2006... Jupiter's Little Red Spot has become as strong as its big brother. The highest wind speeds in the smaller, more recent storm have reached 640 kilometers per hour, the same as those of the planet's long-observed Great Red Spot. Amy Simon-Miller...

Galactic spider.(caught by Hubble Space Telescope )(Brief article)
November 4, 2006... Mighty galaxies from little galaxies grow. That's the standard scenario for galaxy formation, and now astronomers have caught on-camera evidence of the process. A Hubble Space Telescope image has revealed the assembly of a large galaxy from...

Nicotine during rat youth primes brain for harder drugs.(Brief article)
November 4, 2006... The addictive ingredient in those cigarettes in the schoolyard could prep the brain for reliance on illicit drugs, say researchers working with adolescent rats. Previous studies have suggested that teenagers who smoke cigarettes are more...

Pain follows cycle.(menstrual cycle changes perception of pain)(Brief article)
November 4, 2006... The rise and fall of estrogen during a female's menstrual cycle may change her perception of pain, according to an experiment on rats. Studies have shown that women tend to report more-intense and longer-lasting pain than men do, but the...

Insulin can protect diabetic brains.(Brief article)
November 4, 2006... Staying on top of diabetes treatments may prevent some of the brain atrophy and cognitive deficits that typically accompany this disease, say researchers studying mice. Previous research in people had shown that diabetes, whether diagnosed...

Mom's caffeine harms pups' brain cells.(Brief article)
November 4, 2006... Rats born to mothers who drank caffeinated beverages throughout their pregnancies had abnormal brain-cell function, researchers report. Experts already recommend that pregnant women limit their caffeine to 300 milligrams per day--about the...

A Year in the Life of the Universe: A Seasonal Guide to Viewing the Cosmos.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF THE UNIVERSE: A Seasonal Guide to Viewing the Cosmos ROBERT GENDLER From Earth, the view of the heavens changes from season to season. Gendler's lavishly illustrated guide is intended to help astronomy buffs recognize...

The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... THE COSMIC LANDSCAPE: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design LEONARD SUSSKIND Widely recognized as the father of string theory, Susskind tackles another idea that's so contentious that it has formed a rift within the physics...

A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... A BEAUTIFUL MATH: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature TOM SIEGFRIED In the 1950s, John Nash, a brilliant but mentally ill mathematician, published research on game theory and its real-life applications. Though...

Passionate Minds.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... PASSIONATE MINDS DAVID BODANIS In 18th-century France, the writer voltaire married the woman who would become his intellectual and emotional soul mate, Emilie du Chatelet. In a time when women weren't formally educated the 27-year-old du...

Skin: A Natural History.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... SKIN: A Natural History NINA G. JABLONSKI PeopLe glean much of what they know about the world through skin--the largest organ in, or perhaps one should say on, the human body: skin. Skin protects people from harmful environmental agents,...

Twisted logic?(Letter to the editor)
November 4, 2006... I have a question concerning "The Sun's Halo in 3-D" (SN: 8/19/06, p. 120). It says, "As the sun rotates, it polar regions make a complete circle in about 34 days, compared with the 25 days required by its equator." I was wondering how it's...

Dark secrets.(Letter to the editor)
November 4, 2006... I won't state that "dark matter" hasn't been discovered. However I disagree that empirical evidence for it is demonstrated in this collision ("Enlightened: Dark matter spotted after cosmic crash," SN: 8/26/06, p. 131). Other phenomena that...

Shakespeare on the clock.(Letter to the editor)
November 4, 2006... There is a serious limitation to the "print clock" technique ("Mutant Maps," SN: 8/26/06, p. 136) that can probably be addressed. The method proposed holds good only for works with small print runs (such as expensive maps), where the damage to...

Dust bust.(Letter to the editor)
November 4, 2006... I find it interesting that when we didn't find as much deuterium as we expected near the sun, we assumed it's hidden by dust ("Too Much Deuterium?" SN: 9/9/06, p. 172). But there didn't seem to be any real proof that it is indeed hidden by the...

Malaria reversal: drug regains potency in African nation.(chloroquine)
November 11, 2006... An inexpensive drug that has lost much of its punch against malaria over the past 20 years is showing signs of regaining its strength in the African nation of Malawi. But researchers warn that the entire continent would have to coordinate its...

Not so clean: service industries emit greenhouse gases too.
November 11, 2006... In recent decades, a large part of the U.S. economy has shifted to providing services rather than manufacturing products. Despite the presumption that the change bodes well for the environment, service industries such as the retail trade are...

Sick and tired: tracking paths to chronic fatigue.
November 11, 2006... Stressful experiences and a genetic predisposition toward emotional turmoil contribute to some cases of chronic fatigue syndrome, two new studies indicate. The investigations, published in the November Archives of General Psychiatry, add...

See how they see: immature cells boost vision in night-blind mice.
November 11, 2006... Transplanted retinal cells can restore some vision in mice with degenerative eye disease, experiments show. The new findings could point the way toward treatments for several forms of progressive blindness, including macular degeneration, which...

Hot, hot, hot: peppers and spiders reach same pain receptor.
November 11, 2006... The burn of hot peppers and the searing pain of a spider bite may have a common cause. New research suggests that molecules in hot peppers and in a certain spider's venom target the same receptor on nerve cells. Several years ago,...

Birds beware: several veterinary drugs may kill scavengers.
November 11, 2006... Scavenging birds worldwide could be at risk of accidental poisoning from carcasses of livestock that farmers had dosed with certain anti-inflammatory drugs, according to a survey of veterinarian records. The work grows out of discoveries in...

New eye on the sun.(Hinode)(Brief article)
November 11, 2006... The recently launched Hinode spacecraft made this x-ray portrait of several-million-degree gas in the sun's outer atmosphere on Oct. 28. The test image reveals that features known as X-ray bright points (two exam pies are in box) are simple...

The little chill: tiny wind generator to cool microchip hot spots.
November 11, 2006... Technologists cramming more and more transistors onto microchips face a common problem: too much heat. To make computers chill, manufacturers typically outfit hot chips with heat sinks, whose fins release heat into a stream of air. Now, a...

The antibiotic vitamin: deficiency in vitamin D may predispose people to infection.
November 11, 2006... In April 2005, a virulent strain of influenza hit a maximum-security forensic psychiatric hospital for men that's midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. John J. Cannell, a psychiatrist there, observed with increasing curiosity as one...

Brave old world: the debate over rewilding North America with ancient animals.(Cover story)
November 11, 2006... For the first time in several thousand years, a lion's roar reverberates through the Grand Canyon. California condors descend into that chasm as though sliding down a spiral staircase. Bolson tortoises creep through spiky yucca plants in the...

Curry may counter cognitive decline.(turmeric )(Brief article)
November 11, 2006... A chemical found in turmeric, an ingredient in curry, may prevent cognitive impairment, a study of Singaporeans suggests. The chemical, called curcumin, has anti-inflammatory and anticancer properties, past research in animals had suggested...

Dementia warning.(Brief article)
November 11, 2006... Aging populations of the world, beware: Disorders of memory and thinking will become much more common with more people living into their 90s, according to a long-term study in England and Wales. Even people who reach age 80 free of...

Rodents tell a geologic tale.(Andes)(Brief article)
November 11, 2006... The discovery of previously unknown rodent species that lived in Chile millions of years ago suggests that mountains in the southern Andes first rose to significant heights at least 18 million years ago. By measuring the proportions of...

DNA analysis reveals extinct type of wolf.(gray wolf were different in ice age)(Brief article)
November 11, 2006... Many species of large mammals went extinct when the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. But Canis lupus, the gray wolf, survived that wrenching period unscathed--or so scientists thought. New genetic analyses of the remains of gray...

Society sans frills.(dinosaurs )(Brief article)
November 11, 2006... Past studies suggest that horned dinosaurs such as Triceratops and their relatives, a group known as ceratopsians, lived in herds and used the frills on their skulls and other ornamentations to identify members of their own species, as did many...

Early tetrapod likely ate on shore.(Acanthostega)(Brief article)
November 11, 2006... The skull structure of Acanthostega, a semiaquatic creature that lived about 365 million years ago, suggests that although the creature spent most of its time in the water, it fed on shore or in the shallows rather than in deep water. ...

The Curious History of Relativity: How Einstein's Theory of Gravity Was Lost and Found Again.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 11, 2006... THE CURIOUS HISTORY OF RELATIVITY: How Einstein's Theory of Gravity Was Lost and Found Again JEAN EISENSTAEDT Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity was met with widespread acceptance and acclaim, although most people didn't...

Chronicle of the Pharaohs: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 11, 2006... CHRONICLE OF THE PHARAOHS: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt PETER A. CLAYTON Pharaohs led a powerful Egyptian civilization that lasted more than 3,000 years. In this vivid guide containing more than 300...

Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth's Ancient Atmosphere.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 11, 2006... OUT OF THIN AIR: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth's Ancient Atmosphere PETER D. WARD Dinosaurs were the dominant life form on Earth for more than 150 million years. In this book, Ward, a professor of biology and Earth and space studies,...

The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 11, 2006... THE EMOTION MACHINE: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind MARVIN MINSKY The human mind is constantly processing information, even when it's unaware of it. Thinking goes beyond deliberation to...

Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 11, 2006... JANE GOODALL: The Woman Who Redefined Man DALE PETERSON In her youth, Jane Goodall impressed people mainly as an extroverted and attractive woman. She graduated from secretarial school in London and became a secretary at oxford University....

The Carolinas to New Jersey.(Letter to the editor)
November 11, 2006... "Bad-News Beauties: Poison-spined fish from Asia have invaded U.S. waters" (SN: 9/9/06, p. 168) cites evidence of a severe genetic bottleneck, suggesting that perhaps no more than three pregnant females launched the expanding western Atlantic...

Bugged.(Letter to the editor)
November 11, 2006... If your cell phone battery is depleted for no obvious reason ("Cyber attack depletes cell phone batteries," SN: 9/16/06, p. 190), another possibility is an attack by law enforcement. Special firmware may have been surreptitiously downloaded...

Bright idea.(Letter to the editor)
November 11, 2006... "Enigmatic Eruptions: Gamma-ray bursts lack supernova fireworks" (SN: 9/23/06, p. 196) states that gamma-ray bursts are "a million trillion times as bright as the sun." The sun is so bright that humans can't look directly at it from 93 million...

Ancient gene yield: new methods retrieve Neandertals' DNA.
November 18, 2006... Welcome to the era of Neandertal genetics. Researchers announced this week that they have retrieved and analyzed a huge chunk of Neandertal DNA, covering more than 1 million of the roughly 3 million paired chemical constituents of an...

Dark fingerprints: hubble sheds light on cosmic expansion.(Hubble Space Telescope)
November 18, 2006... The mysterious cosmic push that's tearing apart the universe began revving up about 5 billion years ago. But a new study reveals that several billion years earlier, the bizarre, elastic substance that fuels this push was lurking in the shadows...

Unstoppable bot: armed with self-scrutiny, a mangled robot moves on.(This Week)
November 18, 2006... Severe maulings hardly slowed down the robotic assassins in the Terminator science fiction movies. Now, roboticists have made a real machine that carries on despite serious damage. The crucial factor in that feat, the robot's developers...

More evidence of protection: circumcision reduces STD risk in men.(sexually transmitted diseases)
November 18, 2006... Circumcised men are less likely to get sexually transmitted diseases than uncircumcised men are, a long-term study finds. Circumcision--the surgical removal of the foreskin on the penis, usually soon after birth--is rarely considered a...

Cleanup speedup: device improves oil-spill recovery.
November 18, 2006... By adding grooves to the surface of a common oil-skimming device, researchers recovered up to three times as much oil as they did with smooth-surfaced devices. The improvement could reduce the environmental and economical costs of oil spills....

Chicken speak: birds pass test for fancy communication.
November 18, 2006... A chicken going "tck, tck, tck" as it pecks is announcing the presence of food. That clucking makes the chicken the first animal other than primates that's been shown to make sounds that, like words, represent something in the environment,...

Derailing a disease: stem cells slow dogs' muscular dystrophy.
November 18, 2006... Muscle-producing stem cells injected into dogs with the equivalent of Duchenne muscular dystrophy significantly slowed the disease's progression, researchers report. In people who have the incurable disease, abbreviated as DMD, muscles...

Dashing rogues: freak ocean waves pose threat to ships, deep-sea oil platforms.
November 18, 2006... In February 1933, the Navy tanker USS Ramapo was steaming its way from the Philippines to San Diego in the midst of an exceptionally strong storm. The 146-meter-long ship was buffeted by near-hurricane-force winds. Early on the morning of Feb....

Evolution's mystery woman: disagreements rage about tiny ancient islanders.
November 18, 2006... All hail Flo, the diminutive belle of the evolutionary ball. She made a flashy entrance in 2004 using the species name Homo floresiensis, given to her by her discoverers. Flashbulbs popped when the scientists announced the results of their...

The African source of the Amazon's fertilizer.(Brief article)
November 18, 2006... In the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere, massive dust storms from the African Sahara waft southwest across the Atlantic to drop tons of vital minerals on the Amazon basin in South America. Now, scientists have pinpointed the source of...

Were Viking landers blind to life?(CHEMISTRY)(signs of life on Mars)(Brief article)
November 18, 2006... The Viking landers may have missed potential signs of life when they explored Mars in 1976, an international research team asserts. NASA's two unmanned Viking craft landed on Mars, took pictures, and conducted a variety of experiments....

Farm salmon spread deadly lice.(Brief article)
November 18, 2006... In the Pacific Northwest, sea lice that spread from cultivated salmon to their wild counterparts have become major parasites affecting the wild population. The lice, which are visible to the naked eye, attach to fish and draw blood and...

Black hole survey.(Swift satellite )(Brief article)
November 18, 2006... Scanning the sky for high-energy X rays, NASA's Swift satellite has completed the first comprehensive census of active supermassive black holes that lie within 400 million light-years of Earth. The study, reported in October at a meeting of the...

Asian amber yields oldest known bee.(Brief article)
November 18, 2006... A tiny chunk of amber from Southeast Asia contains the remains of a bee that's at least 35 million years older than any reported fossil of similar bees. The amber nodule that entombs the newly described Melittosphex burmensis was among...

Nearest extrasolar planet.(near star Epsilon Eridani )(Brief article)
November 18, 2006... Astronomers have confirmed the existence of the nearest known planet beyond the solar system. The body orbits the young star Epsilon Eridani just 10.5 light-years from Earth, and it's 1.5 times as massive as Jupiter. The observations,...

Revving up recall while fast asleep.(gentle electrical current enhances memory )(Brief article)
November 18, 2006... Scientists have discovered a way to give memory a modest lift while people slumber. Application of a gentle electrical current to the scalp, which nudges sleepers into a particular phase of sleep, boosts recall the next day for recently learned...

Hey, that's me!(ZOOLOGY)(antics of an elephant named Happy)(Brief article)
November 18, 2006... The antics of an Asian elephant named Happy suggest that her species could be one of the few whose members recognize their own images, researchers say. When Happy stood in front of a jumbo mirror, she repeatedly touched her trunk to a...

AA Field Guide to Mammals of North America: 4th ed.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 18, 2006... A FIELD GUIDE TO MAMMALS OF NORTH AMERICA: Fourth Edition FIONA A. REID This portable, sturdy, full-color paperback is intended as a tool for animal enthusiasts. It presents a comprehensive range of mammals, from shrews to bobcats, elk,...

Descartes: The Life and Times of a Genius.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 18, 2006... DESCARTES: The Life and Times of a Genius A.C. GRAYLING Though Rene Descartes died 4 centuries ago, his emphasis on rational thought formed the foundation for modern scientific inquiry. In this detailed biography, Grayling fleshes out the...

Saturn: A New View.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 18, 2006... SATURN: A New View LAURA LOVETT, JOAN HORVATH, AND JEFF CUZZI Since its discovery, Saturn, with its majestic rings, has captured humankind's imagination. Its beauty inspired researchers at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., to plan...

The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 18, 2006... THE SECRET OF SCENT: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell LUCA TURIN Scents permeate the air, as fragrances of all sorts are being added to an increasing number of products. Remarkably, scientists are still working out the...

Out of the Shadows: Contributions of Twentieth-Century Women to Physics.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 18, 2006... OUT OF THE SHADOWS: Contributions of Twentieth-Century Women to Physics NINA BYERS AND GARY WILLIAMS, EDS. Although the greatest barriers against women in higher education and research have been removed, women's historical achievements in...

Sunny side heads up.(Letter to the editor)
November 18, 2006... "Rare Uranian eclipse" (SN: 9/9/06, p. 166) tells us, "Because the moons of Uranus orbit at the planet's equator, the sun seldom illuminates them directly." I think what you mean is that the moons seldom pass directly between Uranus and the...

Economic depression.(Letter to the editor)
November 18, 2006... "Mood disorder cuts work performance" (SN: 9/23/06, p. 206) said that people with bipolar disorder tend to have more lost workdays than those with major depression do. The data shows this is true. However, the authors point out that in the...

You call that tourism?(Letter to the editor)
November 18, 2006... I was extremely disappointed to read the definition of ecotourism as being "the practice of visiting sites where exotic landscapes and rare animals are the main attractions" ("Good Gone Wild," SN: 9/30/06, p. 218). Ecotourism was founded with...

Good trip, bad trip.(Letter to the editor)
November 18, 2006... The "mystical journey" described in "Chemical Enlightenment" (SN: 9/30/06, p. 216) has long been available drug free and under carefully controlled conditions via biofeedback. The results of these sessions are very similar to those described by...

Toxin buster: new technique makes cottonseeds edible.(Texas A&M University's Keerti Rathore on the usage of RNA interference )
November 25, 2006... Scientists have engineered cotton plants to produce seeds that are missing a poisonous compound that had previously rendered them inedible. With the amount of crop currently planted, such modified cottonseeds could fill the daily protein needs...

Fighting styles: gene gives flies his, her conflict moves.(fruit flies)
November 25, 2006... A female fruit fly fights like a guy and a male fly fights like a girl after researchers switch forms of one gene, according to fly-fight specialists. That gene, fruitless, is the same one that scientists had found to control roles in...

Cosmic pops: nearby galaxy is hotbed of supernova formation.
November 25, 2006... Talk about an explosive personality. Large galaxies usually have no more than three supernovas blow up in a century, but the nearby galaxy NGC 1316 has had two such explosions within the past 5 months and four in the past 26 years. Amateur...

Kidney progress: drug slows cyst growth.(roscovitine)
November 25, 2006... An experimental drug called roscovitine may inhibit a degenerative kidney disease that so far has defied cure, a study in mice shows. Combined with promising results from animal studies on other potential drugs, the new finding brightens the...

Super silicon: top semiconductor turns into a superconductor.
November 25, 2006... While not yet leaping over tall buildings in a single bound, silicon is doing something pretty super these days--conducting electricity with zero resistance. The material achieved that triumph when physicists in France crammed...

Age becomes her: male chimpanzees favor old females as mates.
November 25, 2006... In the forests of Uganda's Kibale National Park, male chimpanzees on the make know what they want in a sexual partner--wrinkled skin, ragged ears, irregular bald patches, broken teeth, and elongated nipples. For these guys, nothing beats the...

Ticking toward trouble: long-term rise in heart rate portends death.
November 25, 2006... Men whose hearts beat faster over time are likely to die earlier than those whose hearts maintain an unchanging cadence year after year, according to a 20-year study of French police officers. But a heart with a slowing rate is likely to keep...