Science News articles from November 2007

Science News archives from November 2007

Early arrival: HIV came from Haiti to United States.(This Week)
November 3, 2007... An analysis of 25-year-old blood samples pushes the arrival of HIV in the United States back to about 1969, 12 years before AIDS was first described by a doctor in Los Angeles. The virus came from Haiti, which served as a Western Hemisphere...

Cousin who? Gliding mammals may be primates' nearest kin.(This Week)(colugos)
November 3, 2007... Hey, primates, meet the colugos--two little-known species of small rain forest mammals now presented as your next of kin. With one species native to the Philippines and the other to Southeast Asia, colugos can stretch out a membrane that...

Extreme healing: protein aids limb regrowth in newts.(This Week)
November 3, 2007... Chop off the leg of a salamander or newt, and the limb will slowly grow back. How the wounded stump regrows into a leg is poorly understood, but now researchers have identified a key protein behind this regenerative power. Studying animals...

Clay that kills: ground yields antibacterial agents.(This Week)
November 3, 2007... A fistful of slimy green clay may be just what the doctor ordered. Researchers studying a special type of French clay found that it smothers a diverse array of bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant strains and a particularly nasty pathogen...

Chilled out? Ice could lurk beneath Martian equator.(This Week)
November 3, 2007... Radar observations from a craft orbiting Mars hint that an immense volume of ice-rich material may underlie a vast region along the Red Planet's equator. The long, narrow, and disconnected swaths of the Medusae Fossae formation extend...

Stimulant inaction: ADHD drug's mental lift proves surprisingly weak.(This Week)(attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder)(central nervous system stimulants)
November 3, 2007... Children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often calm down and behave better when taking the stimulant medication methylphenidate. Nonetheless, this drug largely fails to alleviate underlying mental difficulties considered...

Plugging leaks: manipulating receptors may impede sepsis.(This Week)
November 3, 2007... Using synthetic molecules that bind to signaling proteins on blood vessel cells, scientists have discovered a way to subdue sepsis in mice. They report that activating or disabling the proteins affects the course of sepsis and could provide a...

Rock, paper, toxins.(This Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In many ecosystems, several competing species coexist because none is best at everything. Tobias Reichenbach of the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and his colleagues ran computer simulations of three virtual...

Fossil sparks: new finds ignite controversy over ape and human evolution.
November 3, 2007... Fifty years ago, British anatomist Wilfrid Le Gros Clark explained in a lecture why evolutionary scientists argue so vehemently about how ancient apelike and humanlike creatures eventually gave way to modern humans. "Every fossil relic which...

Gammas from heaven: physicists and astronomers join forces to study the high-energy universe.(Cover story)
November 3, 2007... Not long ago, physicists seeking to understand the cataclysmic events at the birth of the universe had to rely on massive, earthbound experiments in which beams of charged particles, steered by powerful magnetic fields, traveled in circles for...

DNA to Neandertals: lighten up.(ANTHROPOLOGY)(Brief article)
November 3, 2007... Some Neandertals possessed a pigmentation gene in an inactivated form that would have produced pale skin and possibly even red hair, a new study indicates. A team led by Carles Lalueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona analyzed DNA...

Printing scheme could yield 3-D photonic crystals.(MATERIALS SCIENCE)(Brief article)
November 3, 2007... Photonic crystals are latticelike structures that can manipulate the flow of light. Materials scientists have now devised a way of making such crystals with complex three-dimensional structures that could serve as the basic elements of optical...

The first matrushka.(WHAT'S FOR DINNER?)(fossils)(Brief article)
November 3, 2007... A team of German paleontologists has unearthed a fossil that preserves one creature inside another that's nestled inside yet another, a Paleozoic version of the Russian nesting dolls known as matrushkas. The unusual find came from material...

Deinonychus' claws were hookers, not rippers.(PALEONTOLOGY)
November 3, 2007... Deinonychus and its relatives, a group of bipedal, meat-eating dinosaurs collectively known as raptors, gained a fearsome reputation because of the enlarged, sicklelike claw they had on each foot. Many paleontologists have presumed that the...

Dinosaurs matured sexually while still growing.(PALEOBIOLOGY)(Brief article)
November 3, 2007... A distinct type of bone tissue preserved in the fossils of several species of dinosaurs suggests that the ancient reptiles were sexually mature long before they'd gained adult size. In modern-day female birds, a thin layer of bone that's...

Meet the old wolves, same as the new wolves.(ANIMAL BEHAVIOR)(Brief article)
November 3, 2007... An analysis of fossils from southern California's La Brea tar pits hints that the dire wolf, a species that died out at the end of the last ice age, had a social structure similar to that of its modern-day relatives. Dire wolves are the...

Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 3, 2007... IDENTICAL STRANGERS: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited ELYSE SCHEIN AND PAULA BERNSTEIN Imagine being told at age 35 that you had an identical twin--a person whom you'd never met. This is what happened to Elyse Schein after she...

American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 3, 2007... AMERICAN CHESTNUT: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree SUSAN FREINKEL From Georgia to Maine, the American chestnut tree once reigned as a symbol of the country's rugged wilderness. A fungal blight imported from Asia, however,...

Citrus: A History.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 3, 2007... CITRUS: A History PIERRE LAZLO With orange juice a staple at the breakfast table and lemonade stands a childhood summer tradition, it is easy to forget that citrus used to be reserved for the wealthy, its scarcity making it a delicacy...

The Mathematician's Brain: A Personal Tour through the Essentials of Mathematics and Some of the Great Minds behind Them.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 3, 2007... THE MATHEMATICIAN'S BRAIN: A Personal Tour through the Essentials of Mathematics and Some of the Great Minds behind Them DAVID RUELLE British mathematician, logician, and cryptographer Alan Turing gained fame for breaking the Enigma cipher...

Microcosmos: Discovering the world through Microscopic Images from 20 X to over 22 Million X Magnification.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 3, 2007... MICROCOSMOS: Discovering the world through Microscopic Images from 20X to over 22 Million X Magnification BRANDON BROLL The scanning-electron microscope (SEM) is a marvelous tool. Magnified 20 million to 22 million times, ordinary objects...

Waste not, want not.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 3, 2007... "Cellulose Dreams" (SN: 8/25/07, p. 120) ignored important research by David Tflman and Jason Hill of the University of Minnesota. They found that planting a crop of 18 different native prairie plants grown in highly degraded and infertile soil...

Turn it down.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 3, 2007... Researchers may only recently have discovered that female zebra finches are more likely to flirt with strangers when background noise goes up ("High Volume, Low Fidelity," SN: 8/25/07, p. 116), but young male humans seem to have known that...

Correction.(LETTERS)(Correction notice)
November 3, 2007... "Better than Pap" (SN: 10/20/07, p. 172) erroneously described the human papillomavirus (HPV) test for cervical cancer as a blood test. In fact, like the Pap smear, it is performed on a sample of cervical cells.

Smarty gene: breast-fed kids show DNA-aided IQ boost.(This Week)
November 10, 2007... Scientists have achieved a breakthrough in deciphering the genetics of intelligence. Ironically, they did it by accounting for a key environmental factor. Breast-feeding boosts children's IQs by 6 to 7 points over the IQs of kids who...

Ray tracing: energetic cosmic rays linked to giant black holes.(This Week)
November 10, 2007... Imagine a single proton smashing into Earth's atmosphere with as much punch as a fast-pitch baseball. For decades, scientists have suspected that protons and other particles with such huge energies, known as ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, arise...

Silencing pests: altered plants make RNA that keeps insects at bay.(This Week)
November 10, 2007... Two teams of researchers have modified plants to produce genetic material that disables critical genes in insects that eat the plants. The technique could provide a new strategy for agricultural-pest control. Looking for a new way to...

Not like: clockwork: high-fat diet disrupts daily routines of mice.(This Week)
November 10, 2007... Most mice sleep, eat, and exercise on a predictable 24-hour cycle, thanks to their precise internal clocks. But mice fed a fatty diet have trouble sticking to their schedule, new research shows. Genetic activity, not just behavior, drives the...

Yellowstone rising: magma floods into chamber beneath park.(This Week)
November 10, 2007... From mid-2004 through 2006, parts of the terrain in Yellowstone National Park rose as much as 7 centimeters per year, a rate about three times that previously measured. Analyses suggest that the rapid uplift results from the flow of molten rock...

Ladies first: genes skew sex ratios in evolutionary struggle.(This Week)
November 10, 2007... Competition among genes within an individual male fruit fly can cause its sperm to produce a high proportion of female offspring. Now, scientists have identified a gene responsible for this well-known phenomenon as well as the gene that later...

Mr. not wrong: not my species? Not a problem.(This Week)
November 10, 2007... Female toads that flirt with a male of another species may have their own best interests at heart. The plains spadefoot toad spawns offspring that grow up faster if dad is a different species called the Mexican spadefoot, says Karin...

Mother knows all: next generation of prenatal tests finds clues to baby's health in mother's blood.
November 10, 2007... For 9 months, doctors can at best make educated guesses about a growing fetus' future as a healthy human. Those first fuzzy black-and-white ultrasound images can provide a mother with the peace of mind that she has a boy or girl with a beating...

Tortoise genes and island beings: giant Galapagos reptiles on slow road to recovery.(Cover story)
November 10, 2007... Not far from where the Galapagos Islands' most famous loner spends his days, tourists disembark by the inflatable boatload at a modern dock. A path takes them past marine iguanas sneezing brine from their salt-caked nostrils and striated herons...

Hooking up.(NANOTECHNOLOGY)(Brief article)
November 10, 2007... Researchers have created molecules that spontaneously form sturdy networks on a surface, a step that could bring molecular-scale electronic circuits closer to reality. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Leonhard Grill of the Free University of...

Earache microbe shows resistance.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief article)
November 10, 2007... A microbe that causes middle ear infections has developed resistance to a wide range of antibiotics, a new study finds. The offender is a strain of Streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterium best known for causing pneumonia. However, the microbe...

Groundwater use adds C[O.sub.2] to the air.(EARTH SCIENCE)(Brief article)
November 10, 2007... Using groundwater for crop irrigation or industrial purposes adds more planet-warming carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than volcanoes do, a new study suggests. As water soaks through soil, it picks up carbon dioxide that's generated when...

Salmonella seeks sweets.(FOOD SCIENCE)(Brief article)
November 10, 2007... Salmonella enterica, a major food-poisoning germ, can enter the tissues of fresh lettuce where no amount of surface washing will evict it. The scientists who reported that finding earlier this year now think that they've gotten to the root of...

Burdens of knowledge.(SCIENCE & SOCIETY)
November 10, 2007... The gold rush of human genetics is well under way. Now that tools for profiling genome activity are widely available, scientists have found more than 80 disease-related variations in human DNA, many of them in the past year. As a result,...

Nongene DNA boosts AIDS risk.(INFECTIOUS DISEASES)(Brief article)
November 10, 2007... A newly discovered genetic variation raises some people's vulnerability to infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. People who have this difference in a single letter of their genetic code would have about a 15 percent greater risk...

Doing the DNA shuffle.(EVOLUTION)(Brief article)
November 10, 2007... During the 6 million years since humans' ancestral lineage diverged from the ancestors of the other great apes, DNA near the ends of human chromosomes has evolved more rapidly than scientists had previously realized. A new comparison of...

Life in the Soil: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 10, 2007... LIFE IN THE SOIL: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners JAMES B. NARDI Soil is more than just a planting medium. The ground beneath our feet is teeming with life, forming an ecosystem that provides the elements necessary for plant growth....

Natural Selections: Selfish Altruists, Honest Liars, and Other Realities of Evolution.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 10, 2007... NATURAL SELECTIONS: Selfish Altruists, Honest Liars, and Other Realities of Evolution DAVID P. BARASH As the debate between proponents of intelligent design and of evolution rages on, Barash demonstrates how natural selection can explain...

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 10, 2007... MUSICOPHILIA: Tales of Music and the Brain OLIVER SACKS A piece of music can compel us to move our bodies or move us to tears. How can a series of notes, strung together, have such a profound effect? And what can that experience tell us...

How to Build an Igloo and Other Snow Shelters.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 10, 2007... HOW TO BUILD AN IGLOO AND OTHER SNOW SHELTERS NORBERT E. YANKIELUN Forget snowmen. To really impress the neighbors after the next snowstorm, build an igloo. Igloos are marvels of engineering--warm, solid structures composed of a cold, soft...

Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 10, 2007... KITCHEN LITERACY: HOW We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back ANN VILEISIS Most people today are far removed from their foods' natural sources: They have no idea of how food gets to supermarket shelves....

Thinking it through.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 10, 2007... Bjorn Merker says that "the tacit consensus concerning the cerebral cortex as the 'organ of consciousness'... may in fact be seriously in error" ("Consciousness in the Raw," SN: 9/15/07, p. 170). But the real tacit consensus is that the...

Pride and privilege.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 10, 2007... Other than people with HIV or AIDS, the prime model for a group overrepresented among those taking the option of physician-assisted suicide ("No Slippery Slope" SN: 10/6/07, p. 212) would appear to be educated, insured, financially comfortable,...

Unclear advice?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 10, 2007... A researcher cited in "Exhaust fumes might threaten people's hearts" (SN: 9/29/07, p. 205) recommends that people at risk of heart attack should avoid exercising outdoors on highly polluted days. What an odd conclusion, on two counts: First,...

No, the other one.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 10, 2007... My cat has been doing for years what scientists at the University of St. Andrews reported of orangutans: motioning for healthy portions of their favorite foods ("Orangutans hand it to researchers," SN: 9/8/07, p. 158). Except that four tins of...

Superbug: what makes one bacterium so deadly.(SCIENCE NEWS This Week)
November 17, 2007... Some of the most aggressive antibiotic-resistant staph infections gain their advantage with a molecule that punctures the immune cells trying to fight off the bacteria, scientists have discovered. Understanding the role of this molecule in...

Tough frills: ferns' wimp stage aces survival test.(SCIENCE NEWS This Week)
November 17, 2007... A textbook truism about the poor ferns being held back by a weak link in their life cycle may not be so true after all. The upright bursts of fronds that we think of as ferns produce unferny offspring in the form of bits of free-living,...

Crime growth: early mental ills fuel young-adult offending.(SCIENCE NEWS This Week)
November 17, 2007... A new study offers a rare glimpse of the psychiatric profiles of children most likely to commit crimes as young adults. It also suggests that childhood mental disorders substantially contribute to criminal behavior by adults. Youngsters...

Huge, yet not quite life-size.(SCIENCE NEWS This Week)(Brief article)
November 17, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On Nov. 21, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh will unveil the world's largest dinosaur mural, a 180-foot-long portrayal of creatures and plants that lived in the western United States about 150...

Flare-Up: comet Holmes' surprise bloom.(SCIENCE NEWS This Week)
November 17, 2007... In less than 24 hours, a small, faint comet became 400,000 times brighter late last month, blossoming into a fuzzy, star-like apparition visible to the naked eye. Now, 3 weeks after its spectacular flare-up, Comet 17P/Holmes remains visible to...

Bone builder: drug may offer steroid users new protection against fractures.(SCIENCE NEWS This Week)
November 17, 2007... In the half-century since their introduction to medicine, glucocorticoid steroids have been hailed as wonder drugs that have enabled millions of people to combat rheumatoid arthritis, severe asthma, autoimmune diseases, and organ-transplant...

Flawed stem cells yield fragile X clues: researchers study genetic disorder via discarded embryos.(SCIENCE NEWS This Week)
November 17, 2007... Scrutinizing the first days of development in abnormal embryonic stem cells, researchers have uncovered a basic mechanism underlying fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited cause of mental retardation in boys. "It could have...

Back from the dead? 'Resurrections' of long-missing species lead to revelations.
November 17, 2007... In December 1938, Marjorie Courtney-Latimer, curator of a natural history museum in East London, South Africa, went to the docks to look for interesting specimens among the day's catch. What she found one day she later described as "the most...

Shadow world: how many dimensions space has could all be a matter of perspective.
November 17, 2007... In a school of thought that teaches the existence of extra dimensions, Juan Maldacena may at first sound a little out of place. String theory is physicists' still-tentative strategy for reconciling Einstein's theory of gravitation with quantum...

Wild chimps scale branches of culture.(ANTHROPOLOGY)(Brief article)
November 17, 2007... A new analysis of behavioral traditions practiced by African chimpanzees supports the idea that the animals learn about such activities from others, possibly from newcomers to established communities. Chimps thus exhibit cultural diversity,...

Insects laughing at Bt toxin? Try this.(AGRICULTURE)(Brief article)
November 17, 2007... To combat insect resistance to the widely used pesticide Bt, an international research team has announced a new way to restore the pesticide's punch. The insect-killing Bt toxins take their name from Bacillus thuringiensis, the bacterium...

Bucky shrink-wrap.(NANOTECHNOLOGY)(Brief article)
November 17, 2007... Chemists discovered buckyballs--cage-like molecules of 60 carbon atoms--more than 20 years ago. Members of a family of carbon cages known as fullerenes, buckyballs form spontaneously in a hot gas of vaporized carbon. But the exact mechanics of...

Too little sleep may fatten kids.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief article)
November 17, 2007... As childhood obesity reaches epidemic proportions, parents who are concerned about their children's weight might want to encourage an early-to-bed policy. A new study finds that among the primary-school set, losing sleep is linked with gaining...

New climate sensor: Swiss grapes.(EARTH SCIENCE)(Brief article)
November 17, 2007... Using modern weather data and ancient records of grape harvests, researchers have divined summer climate patterns in parts of Switzerland as far back as the late 1400s. Temperature strongly influences the growth of grapevines and the...

Good Germs, Bad Germs: Health and Survival in a Bacterial World.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 17, 2007... Good Germs, Bad Germs: Health and Survival in a Bacterial World JESSICA SNYDER SACHS Increased attention to public sanitation, as well as the advent of antibiotic drugs, significantly extended the human life span during the past century....

Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 17, 2007... SEX SLEEP EAT DRINK DREAM: a Day in the Life of Your Body JENNIFER ACKERMAN In an informative book, Ackerman brings new understanding to the term circadian rhythm. In five chapters--Morning, Midday, Afternoon, Evening, and Night--she...

Hard Road West: History and Geology along the Gold Rush Trail.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 17, 2007... HARD ROAD WEST: History and Geology along the Gold Rush Trail KEITH HEYER MELDAHL Lewis and Clark set out on their epic journey to the Northwest in 1803--full of confidence yet knowing little of the challenges that lay before them. Less...

Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 17, 2007... SHYNESS: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness CHRISTOPHER LANE Beginning in the 1970s, Lane recounts, a small group of well-known psychiatrists literally rewrote the book on mental illness. They expanded the Diagnostic and Statistical...

The Genetic Strand: Exploring a Family History Through DNA.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 17, 2007... THE GENETIC STRAND: Exploring a Family History Through DNA EDWARD BALL In 2000, Edward Ball, author of the National Book Award-winning Slaves in the Family, returned to live in Charleston, S.C., where he'd spent his boyhood. He furnished...

Unequal opportunity.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 17, 2007... "The Wealth of Nations" (SN: 9/1/07, p. 138) describes the difficulty of moving from exporting one product to exporting another in terms of a "distance" between various products. I would imagine, however, that a nation that already manufactures...

The Sputnik effect: then ...(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 17, 2007... In Rio Linda, Calif., on Oct. 4, 1957, my seventh grade classmates and I (the front edge of the baby boom) were busily clipping news accounts of Sputnik for our daily current-events assignment ("Sputnik + 50," SN: 10/6/07,p. 216). Less than a...

... And now.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 17, 2007... The budding scientists and engineers of the sixties who were the recipients of the Sputnik-inspired money "poured into math and science education" are now aging baby boomers. We are in a catch-up situation all over again. There is a frightening...

Hold the embryos: genes turn skin into stem cells.(This Week)
November 24, 2007... In an advance that could solve many of the ethical and technical issues involved in stem cell research, two groups of scientists have independently converted human skin cells directly into stem cells without creating or destroying embryos. ...

It takes a village: tweaking neighbors reroutes evolution.(This Week)
November 24, 2007... When it comes to evolution, no plant stands alone. For mustard plants, investing heavily in pest defense is a good idea if a different plant species lives next door, says Richard Lankau of the Illinois Natural History Survey in Champaign....

Snappy transition: Venus flytrap inspires new materials.(This Week)
November 24, 2007... Inspired by the quick-shut action of the Venus flytrap, researchers have designed a material patterned with microscale hills that can rapidly flip to form valleys. Such materials could serve as fast-release adhesives, sensors in food packaging...

Einstein unruffled: relativity passes stringent new tests.(This Week)
November 24, 2007... By tracking the moon's location to within 1 centimeter, astronomers have put general relativity, Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, to a stringent new test. The theory stood up. In a separate experiment, physicists reconfirmed Einstein's...

Wrong way: HIV vaccine hinders immunity in mice.(This Week)(altered adeno-associated virus vaccine)
November 24, 2007... Two months after investigators halted a once-promising HIV vaccine trial, a horde of mice is delivering more bad news. The viral packaging used in another HIV vaccine has hurt, not helped, the animals' immune systems. The finding prompted...

A toothy smile.(This Week)(dinosaur's teeth)(Brief article)
November 24, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This dinosaur didn't have to worry about dentures. The Nigersaurus taqueti boasted 500 teeth, arranged in 50 rows across its jaw. When a tooth fell out, the teeth that had been lined up behind it would shift forward....

Tadpole slayer: mystery epidemic imperils frogs.(This Week)
November 24, 2007... From Alaska to Florida, a novel and yet-unnamed protozoan is knocking off tadpoles. Species vulnerable to "the beast" belong to the genus Rana, which includes leopard frogs, green frogs, and bullfrogs, says ecologist John C. Maerz. His...

Biohazard: smoking before or after pregnancy may harm daughters' fertility.(This Week)
November 24, 2007... Exposing female mice to chemicals found in cigarette smoke before pregnancy or during the period in which they nurse their young impairs the reproductive capacity of their female offspring, a new study finds. Many women stop smoking when...

Showdown at sex gap: women's intrinsic math and science aptitude divides scientists.
November 24, 2007... Here's a good way to inflame the tempers of all those within earshot. Do as former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers did in 2005 and suggest that the relatively low number of high-achieving women in mathematics and science partly...

Bad vibrations: the ancient craft of bridge design still holds surprises.(Cover story)
November 24, 2007... In the middle of rush hour on Aug. 1, at 6:04 p.m., traffic zoomed across the westbound span of the 1-35 Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis. By 6:05, the 40-year-old structure had buckled and broken, dumping most of the bridge into the...

A smaller magnetometer.(TECHNOLOGY)(sensors which measure brain waves)(Brief article)
November 24, 2007... A sensor the size of a rice grain can detect magnetic fields as small as those produced by brain waves, researchers report. John Kitching of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., and his colleagues filled a...

Eastern farms have native-bee insurance.(BIOLOGY)(native bees take the role of European honeybees)(Brief article)
November 24, 2007... Watermelon fans can stop biting their nails, at least around the Delaware Valley region. Even if the beleaguered honeybees disappear, native bees should be able to buzz in and take care of most of the crop by themselves, says a new study. ...

One star, five planets.(ASTRONOMY)(fifth planet in the 55 Cancri planetary system)(Brief article)
November 24, 2007... With the discovery of a fifth planet circling the nearby star 55 Caneri, astronomers have found the richest--and heaviest--planetary system beyond the sun's. The sunlike star 55 Cancri lies just 41 light-years from Earth. Exoplanet hunters...