Science News articles from November 2008

Science News archives from November 2008

Chemistry's benefits go beyond 'better living'.(FROM THE EDITOR)(Editorial)
November 8, 2008... The old slogan about "better living through chemistry" never quite captured the whole story about society's debt to the science of molecules. In some circles the phrase has even been mocked or perverted, to ridicule the plasticity of modern...

Scientific observations.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(astronaut Neil Armstrong)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... "Our knowledge of the universe around us has increased a thousandfold and more. We learned that Homo sapiens was not forever imprisoned by the gravitational field of Earth.... We've sent probes throughout the solar system and beyond. We've seen...

Science past: November 8, 1958.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... TEMPERATE ZONES MAY BE MAN'S LIMIT FOR COLD--Men living in the temperate zones had better not leave home for colder climes. The areas between the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic Circle and between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic...

Science future.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)(Calendar)
November 8, 2008... November 15 The Museum of Life and Science in Durham, N.C., unveils its holiday mechanical sculpture display. Visit www.ncmls.org November 20 "Irreplaceable: The World's Most Invaluable Species" debate held in London. Visit...

Life.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Sopchoppy Worm Gruntin' Festival)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It's the humans, rather than the moles, that gather to find earthworms during the annual Sopchoppy Worm Gruntin' Festival in Florida. Research reveals a mole-of-a reason why rubbing a piece of iron across a stake in...

Science & society.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... Young scientists earned accolades and scholarships from the SSP Middle School Program, a national science fair that is sponsored by Science News publisher the Society for Science & the Public. Read about this year's winners in "Middle schoolers...

For use daily.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Avocados, nuts, olive oils and other foods rich in unsaturated fats can curb hunger pangs between meals. The oleic acid in these foodstuffs elicits production of a hunger-fighting compound in the small intestine...

Science stats: producing Ph.D.S.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Statistical table)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... Science Stats | PRODUCING PH.D.S Science and engineering doctorates awarded in Asia compared with the United States in 1989 and 2001 All Science and Engineering 1989 Asia 10,035 U.S. 22,706 2001 Asia...

Poaching's long reach threatens elephants anew: killing surges, effects linger years after ivory trade banned.(STORY ONE)
November 8, 2008... It's a tough time to be an African elephant. Despite an international ban on ivory trading, the animals are being slaughtered for their tusks at a greater rate today than before the ban was enacted in 1989. At the same time, scientists are...

NASA attempts to wake up Hubble: it's on-again, off-again for the veteran space telescope.(Atom & Cosmos)(National Aeronautics and Space Administration)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... NASA engineers continue to struggle to revive the Hubble Space Telescope, which fell silent on September 27 after the failure of a data formatting unit. The unit helps label and relay information broadcast to Earth. Since the late September...

Other side of Mercury.(Atom & Cosmos)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Mercury, the solar system's forgotten planet, got back into the limelight on October 6 when the MESSENGER spacecraft flew past for a second time, revealing 30 percent of the crater-scarred body that had never before...

Superstorms swirl at Saturn's poles: Cassini images offer closer look at ringed planet's cyclones.(Atom & Cosmos)
November 8, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ITHACA, N.Y. -- Hurricanes Ike and Katrina can't hold a candle to the giant storms on Saturn. Polar cyclones on the ringed planet are big enough to engulf Earth. The closest look yet at the storms comes from images...

So near, so far away.(Meeting Notes: Division for Planetary Sciences October 10-15, Ithaca, N.Y.)(Kuiper Belt)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... Long-distance relationships are tough enough when partners are a continent apart. Consider the plight of two solar system bodies separated by a distance more than 20 times as great. Jean-Marc Petit of the Besancon Observatory in France and...

A comet doubleheader.(Meeting Notes: Division for Planetary Sciences October 10-15, Ithaca, N.Y.)(comet 8P/Tuttle)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... When comet 8P/Tuttle passed close to Earth early this year, astronomers took its portrait with the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. To their surprise, the radar images have revealed that the comet consists of two chunks that appear to be...

Sniping at Jupiter.(Meeting Notes: Division for Planetary Sciences October 10-15, Ithaca, N.Y.)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... Jupiter, thought to protect the inner planets from space debris, may sometimes hurl material toward Earth. Modeling 40,000 planetesimals, Kevin Grazier of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and colleagues found that close...

Nash's math gets more beautiful: even with infinite choices, games may have stable strategies.(Numbers)(mathematician John Nash)
November 8, 2008... Life's a game, or at least treating it like a game mathematically can be a powerful way to explain the choices people make. John Nash, the mentally troubled mathematician depicted in the book and movie A Beautiful Mind, discovered one of the...

The numbers rarely add up for girls: culture may turn potentially high achievers away from math.(Numbers)
November 8, 2008... A combination of peer pressure, gender stereotyping and low expectations may help turn potentially gifted kids--especially girls--away from mathematics, wasting a country's precious national resource, a new study suggests. The study, by...

Skeletons harbor ancient evidence for tuberculosis: DNA shows disease arose before cattle domestication.(Humans)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... TB or not TB? That was the question created by two human skeletons excavated more than a decade ago at a 9,000-year-old village submerged off Israel's coast. Bone damage apparently produced by some infection created the Shakespearean...

Rumors shaped veterans' view of Gulf War ills: syndrome was defined by informal communication.(Humans)
November 8, 2008... After the bullets stopped flying the rumors took off among British veterans of the 1991 Gulf War. Early accounts of physical and emotional reactions to wartime experiences spread from one person to another through networks of veterans. Within a...

Primordial soup returns to life: vials from '50s hold hints of volcanic birth for amino acids.(Life)
November 8, 2008... After decades of languishing in a cardboard box, unanalyzed vials from a famous chemistry experiment have been brought back to the lab, revealing new clues to the beginnings of life on Earth. Over 50 years ago, 23-year-old graduate student...

No dad needed.(Life)(asexual reproduction in sharks)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] DNA analysis reveals that blacktip sharks like this one may be able to reproduce without a mate. The same team of geneticists that verified the first "virgin birth" among sharks in a small hammerhead in May 2007 has...

Mammals encounter tougher times, new assessment of species shows: latest report finds more than a fifth face extinction threat.(Life)
November 8, 2008... Between a fifth and a generous third of the world's mammal species now face the threat of extinction, according to the first comprehensive review since 1996. Now 1,139 species rank in the most imperiled categories, the conservation...

Fossil find may reveal history's largest snake: serpent exceeded 1 ton, extended nearly 13 meters.(Life)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... CLEVELAND -- Rocks beneath an open-pit coal mine in Colombia have yielded fossils of what could be the world's largest snake, a relative of today's boa constrictor that was 12.8 meters long. Few of today's snakes exceed 9 meters, says...

Stalagmites tell earthquake history: caves could yield insight into timing of Midwestern temblors.(Earth)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... HOUSTON -- The dates at which some Midwestern cave formations began to grow could help researchers chronicle the earthquake history of Missouri and surrounding states, scientists reported October 5 at the annual meeting of the Geological...

A near-record arctic melting: sea-ice coverage increases, but remains below normal.(Earth)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... This summer, the share of the Arctic Ocean covered by sea ice was the second lowest since satellite measurements began in 1979. Because much of the ice had formed just this past winter and was relatively thin, the volume of floating ice at the...

Trees grew fast in Antarctica.(Meeting Notes: Geological Society of America October 5-9, Houston)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... Trees in Antarctica long ago had a growth pattern much different from modern trees, a new study finds. Today, trees in temperate climates have annual growth rings no wider than 2 millimeters. But some fossils of 255-million-year-old trees from...

Salinity sensors.(Meeting Notes: Geological Society of America October 5-9, Houston)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... Mussels could help researchers monitor road-salt pollution in streams, a new study suggests. As the carbonate shells of freshwater mussels such as Elliptio complanata grow, they record changes over time in growth rings just as trees do. So the...

Largest tsunami debris.(Meeting Notes: Geological Society of America October 5-9, Houston)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... Seven immense boulders of coral found far inland on a Tongan island may be the world's largest tsunami debris, new research shows. All evidence hints that the boulders, which lie inland of a 3-kilometer stretch of coastline, are out of place,...

Brain sensory region reactivated decades after hand amputation: transplant restores partial use of original neural pathway.(Body & Brain)
November 8, 2008... David Savage probably never expected to look down and see someone else's hand attached to his right arm. Neither did he anticipate using the strange appendage to illuminate how the brain works. But that's precisely what the hand-transplant...

Protecting newborns from flu.(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... A pregnant woman who gets a flu shot passes protection on to her fetus, lessening the newborn's likelihood of contracting flu, researchers report in the Oct. 9 New England Journal of Medicine. Until now, no randomized trial has evaluated the...

Bad air for growing brains.(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... Mexico City's dirty air may contribute to brain inflammation and intellectual deficits in school-age children, a new study suggests. Among healthy children aged 7 to 18, lifelong Mexico City residents scored lower than peers from a...

Vitamin D deficiency.(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... A vitamin D shortage is more likely in people with Parkinson's disease than in healthy people or those with Alzheimer's, a study in the October Archives of Neurology suggests. Blood samples showed a deficiency in 55 percent of Parkinson's...

Gold mine houses community of one: DNA analysis reveals a self-sufficient species of bacteria.(Genes & Cells)
November 8, 2008... A fracture deep underground in a South African gold mine holds a rare biological find--an ecosystem populated by a single species of bacteria. An analysis of the bacterium's complete genetic makeup, published October 10 in Science, reveals that...

Scientists make bacteria that do basic logic steps: microbes can compute AND, OR, NAND and NOR.(Genes & Cells)(Brief article)
November 8, 2008... If the planet Vulcan had microbes, they might look something like this: bacteria that can perform four basic operations of logic--AND, OR, NAND and NOIR. In the Oct. 17 Science, scientists report success in engineering such bacteria. By...

Not your father's song: the next generation of birds chooses its music.
November 8, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] They're teenagers, and they're off somewhere listening to music. Fortunately for Chris Templeton, these are song sparrows, so be can put radio transmitters on them to figure out where they go. He's...

Nicotine's new appeal: mimicking the addictive compound's action in the brain could lead to new drugs for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and schizophrenia.
November 8, 2008... First, let's clear the air: Nicotine invites addiction, and it employs a delivery device that's been killing people for centuries. But let's also be honest: Nicotine has some attractive qualities. Smokers use it to calm jitters or perk...

Long live plastics: with plastics in museums decomposing, a new effort seeks to halt the demise of materials commonly thought to be unalterable.
November 8, 2008... Because plastic products can be mass-produced cheaply, they have long been considered the poster child of a throwaway culture. Plastics are versatile: Some are soft and flexible, but others are completely rigid. A few mimic natural substances;...

Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children.(BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 8, 2008... Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children Philip Shabecoff and Alice Shabecoff [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In this powerful investigative work, the Shabecoffs tell the stories of communities from Dickson, Tenn., to Pittsfield,...

Sun In a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking.(BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 8, 2008... Sun In a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking Charles Seife [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Fusion is the source of energy that's 30 years away, and always will be, skeptics quip. In...

Testosterone proxy.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
November 8, 2008... In the study on the correlation of high levels of serum calcium with fatal prostate cancer ("Cancer-calcium connection," SN: 9/27/08, p. 12), were testosterone and vitamin D levels also measured simultaneously? Since low levels of both are...

Biologists gone bad.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
November 8, 2008... The mercenary pattern identified by David Michaels ("Corporate campaigns manufacture scientific doubt," SN: 9/27/08, p. 32) is one reason it has been difficult to fight developers who destroy habitat in southern California. They hire accredited...

Following the yawn.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
November 8, 2008... The article "Man yawns, best friend follows" (SN: 8/30/08, p. 13) concluded that, "If the study can be replicated, it strongly suggests that dogs may have a primitive empathy capacity." I like dogs, but before I can jump on the...

A global food disaster.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
November 8, 2008... Sid Perkins reminds us in "Disaster Goes Global" (SN: 8/30/08, p. 16) that in some regions we humans are already consuming close to two-thirds of the land's biomass. A couple of years ago, a study warned us that at current fishing rates we'll...

Multistep reactions.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
November 8, 2008... According to "Disaster Goes Global" (SN: 8/30/08, p. 16), sulfur dioxide reacts with water vapor in the air to produce sulfuric acid. Is this possible? When sulfur dioxide dissolves in water, it produces sulfurous acid, not sulfuric. Industrial...

Correction.(FEEDBACK)(Correction notice)
November 8, 2008... Correction: The article "Path to math" (SN: 9/27/08, p. 10) incorrectly stated that participants in the experiments viewed arrays of dots containing five to 16 dots. What it should have said was that participants viewed arrays of dots...

It's time for addiction science to supersede stigma.(COMMENT)
November 8, 2008... We have a well-honed ability for branding the undesirable attributes of "others." This natural human tendency has evolved and persists for a reason: The definition of an outcast group helps society to delineate its "normal" boundaries. But this...

Maybe radioactivity hasn't revealed all its mysteries.(FROM THE EDITOR)(Editorial)
November 22, 2008... Radioactivity has a long history of confounding conventional scientific wisdom. By the end of the 19th century, most physicists were convinced by the calculations of Lord Kelvin that the Earth was relatively young--perhaps much less than...

Scientific observations.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Deborah Cramer on carbon)(Quotation)(Brief article)
November 22, 2008... "Carbon is the foundation of life. It exists in every living organism, in every cell. While some is stilled, preserved in fossils over long stretches of time, most is continually recycled.... Humans are mostly water and, after that, mostly...

Science past: November 22, 1958.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
November 22, 2008... VOLUNTEERS SHOW VACCINE CAN PREVENT COLDS--The common cold can be prevented, a British scientist reported to the sixth annual Symposium on Antibiotics meeting in Washington, D.C. Weekly injections of a vaccine prepared from the volunteer's own...

Science future.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)(Calendar)
November 22, 2008... December 8-10 The National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment in Washington, D.C. Visit ncseonline.org December 9-12 Arctic Change 2008 to be held in Quebec City, Canada. Visit www.arctic-change2008.com ...

Science Stats: knowledge's worth.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)
November 22, 2008... Median annual salary of employed scientists and engineers by sector in the United States in 2006 [GRAPHIC OMITTED]

Science & the public.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Brief article)
November 22, 2008... The users of new buildings on a university campus were surprised to discover lead in the water. The culprit was unexpected: the faucets. Read "Lead-free? Faucets are anything but." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Sights & sounds.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Brief article)
November 22, 2008... On October 31, the Cassini spacecraft captured close-up images (one shown) of one of Saturn's moons in a confluence of circumstances the craft may not experience again. See "Enceladus south pole" and "Tiger stripes up close."

Humans.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)
November 22, 2008... A new genetic study of the Tyrolean Iceman reveals a genetic signature no longer seen in Europe. Read "The Iceman's mysterious genetic past."

How bizarre.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
November 22, 2008... Physical warmth encourages kind feelings toward others, researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder and Yale University report. The team found that of volunteers who held hot or cold packs and then had the choice to keep a reward or...

Dates in doubt for oldest signs of complex life: new analyses of ancient rocks hint biomarkers came later.(STORY ONE)
November 22, 2008... Chemical biomarkers in ancient Australian rocks, once thought to be the oldest known evidence of complex life on Earth, may have infiltrated the sediments long after they were laid down, new analyses suggest. The biomarkers in question are...

Back story: signs of life.(In the News)(Brief article)
November 22, 2008... Direct evidence of Earth's earliest life is hard to find. So scientists look to biomarkers, chemicals and structures thought to be produced by living things and then preserved. But evidence from many biomarkers remains contentious. ...

Altering a protein wipes out shocking memory in mouse brain: erasing effect appears limited to information being recalled.(Body & Brain)
November 22, 2008... As much as you might want to wipe Uncle Frank's tasteless joke out of your mind but still remember the flavor of Aunt Fran's pie, memory researchers have always said "fuhgedaboudit!" Now, a genetically engineered mouse suggests it may be...

Treatment may offer MS turnaround: leukemia drug improves multiple sclerosis in some people.(Body & Brain)(Multiple sclerosis and alemtuzumab)
November 22, 2008... A disease thought to be incurable is now a step closer to losing that dispiriting reputation. Multiple sclerosis, the disabling neuromuscular disease that has resisted effective drug therapy, eases off in some people given alemtuzumab, a drug...

Halting rotavirus.(Meeting Notes: Interscience Conference on Antimirobial Agents and Chemotherapy and Infectious Diseases Society of America Oct. 25-28, Washington, D.C.)(Brief article)
November 22, 2008... A vaccine against rotavirus provided potent protection in its first year of widespread use. Scientists offered up several studies demonstrating that the oral vaccine has brought about a sharp decline in rotavirus infections in the United States...

Malaria takes on top meds.(Meeting Notes: Interscience Conference on Antimirobial Agents and Chemotherapy and Infectious Diseases Society of America Oct. 25-28, Washington, D.C.)(Brief article)
November 22, 2008... Like a basketball team that plays best against its toughest opponents, the parasite that causes malaria is showing signs of thwarting the most potent drugs currently used against it. Top-line drugs called artemisinins take nearly twice as long...

Fungal meningitis spreads.(Meeting Notes: Interscience Conference on Antimirobial Agents and Chemotherapy and Infectious Diseases Society of America Oct. 25-28, Washington, D.C.)(Brief article)
November 22, 2008... A fungus that causes meningitis has sickened 19 people, four of whom died, in Oregon and Washington over the past four years, Sarah West of the Oregon Health Science University in Portland reported. The new findings indicate that the culprit, a...

David, Solomon may have been kings of copper: ancient site could unite archaeology, biblical accounts.(Humans)
November 22, 2008... New finds among the remnants of a settlement in southern Jordan show that a copper-producing society existed there 3,000 years ago, about 300 years earlier than many archaeologists had assumed, according to an international research team. The...

Farm chemicals can hammer frog populations: study supports link between weed killer and parasites.(Environment)
November 22, 2008... Atrazine, the second-most widely used agricultural pesticide in America, can pose a toxic double whammy to tadpoles. The weed killer not only increases the likelihood that massive concentrations of flatworms will thrive in the amphibians'...

Double the rubble: neighboring star system hosts two asteroid belts: Epsilon Eridani may shed light on youthful solar system.(Atom & Cosmos)
November 22, 2008... In the annals of planethood, astronomers consider the star Epsilon Eridani a member of the fabulous four. Along with Fomalhaut, Beta Pictoris and Vega, Epsilon Eridani is one of the first four stars scientists have found with an icy ring of...

Cannibals have better babies: female spiders who dine on guys have more, tough young.(Life)
November 22, 2008... One's company and two's--lunch. In nature, female Mediterranean tarantulas rarely eat the first male they mate with, reports Jordi Moya-Larano of the Arid Zone Experimental Station in Almeria, Spain. The suitor that shows up next, though,...

Nonstop godwit flights.(Life)(Brief article)
November 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In a flight of epic proportions, a female bar-tailed godwit alighted from her Alaskan breeding ground and flew 11,680 kilometers, nonstop, until she reached her winter home in New Zealand. Called ET, she flew more...

More genes linked to lung cancer: tumors show more mutations in smokers than in nonsmokers.(Genes & Cells)
November 22, 2008... A new analysis increases from 10 to 25 the number of genes linked to lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. The study also identifies new cellular pathways that can trigger these malignancies. "This study gives us...

Sugar helps E. coli go down: foodstuffs without bacteria may heighten infection risk.(Genes & Cells)(Brief article)
November 22, 2008... Some strains of E. coli might rely on something sweet to do their harm. A study published online October 29 in Nature presents results from lab work suggesting that foodstuffs such as red meat and dairy products contain sugar molecules not...

Scientists trace a new path behind the maddening, unrelenting, screaming desire to itch.
November 22, 2008... When it comes to sensory information detected by the body, pain is king, and itch is the court jester. But that insistent, tingly feeling--satisfied only by a scratch--is anything but funny to the millions of people who suffer from it...

Half-life (more or less): physicists are stirred by claims that the sun may change what's unchangeable--the rate of radioactive decay.
November 22, 2008... It's nuclear physics 101: Radioactivity proceeds at its own pace. Each type of radioactive isotope, be it plutonium-238 or carbon-14, changes into another isotope or element at a specific, universal, immutable rate. This much has been...

Silk: mimicking how spiders make their complex array of silks could usher in a tapestry of new materials, and other animals or plants could be designed to be the producers.(Cover story)
November 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Peter Parker is lucky he was bitten by a spider and not a silkworm. Not only does "Spider-Man" have way more superhero panache than "Silkworm-Man," but of all the silks made by various creatures, spider silk is the...

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 22, 2008... The Princeton Companion to Mathematics Timothy Cowers, ed. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Math is everywhere, from the gas station and grocery store to the stock market and science magazines. And it shows up, of course, in schools at all...

Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat--And How to Counter It.(Brief article)(Book review)
November 22, 2008... Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat--And How to Counter It Wallace S. Broecker and Robert Kunzig [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Carbon dioxide recapture is necessary to turn the global warming tide,...

All in a Day's Work: Careers Using Science.(Book review)(Brief review)
November 22, 2008... All in a Day's Work: Careers Using Science Megan Sullivan [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A toolkit for those seeking careers in science and science-related fields. NSTA Press, 2008, 140 p., $15.95.

Two crops, only one pops.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
November 22, 2008... In "Let's get vertical" (SN:10/11/08, p. 16), writer Rachel Ehrenberg reports that "increased demand for a single crop, such as corn, is felt from movie theaters to hog farms." It is important to note, however, that the corn fed to moviegoers...

Shifting paradigms.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
November 22, 2008... I wanted to congratulate you on the cogent article by Tom Siegfried on the nature of spacetime ("It's likely that times are changing," SN:9/13/08, p. 26). Since the contributions of Einstein and a few of his contemporaries, physicists have been...

Cold down there.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
November 22, 2008... In the article "Around the ring" (SN: 10/11/08, p. 8), Ron Cowen writes that the Large Hadron Collider is closed down for the winter to conserve fuel costs. Since the major portion of the facility is 100 meters below ground, how much colder is...

Drug-focused.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
November 22, 2008... Every time there is a new discovery relating to human biochemistry, the knee-jerk reaction of Science News has always been: "This may lead to the development of a new drug," as in "Dopamine's role linked to location" (SN:8/2/08, p. 8). However,...

Clashing continents.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
November 22, 2008... Sid Perkins' article about the effect on C[O.sub.2] levels when India and Asia collided was very interesting ("Continental clash cooled climate," SN:10/11/08, p. 12). Mentally following the progress of India from Gondwana to Asia got me...

Calming imagery.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
November 22, 2008... Regarding the article "Pain relief you can believe in" (SN:10/11/08, p. 9): Surely there must be equivalent calming imagery that would have a similar effect on pain perception and brain activity in those unaffected by the religious imagery. I...

Sound reasoning requires statistical understanding.(COMMENT)(Gerd Gigerenzer )(Interview)
November 22, 2008... Gerd Gigerenzer is director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. He is also director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy in Berlin. He studies how people can make...