Science News articles from October 2004

Science News archives from October 2004

Buckyballs at bat: toxic nanomaterials get a tune-up.
October 2, 2004... Over the past decade, the development of nanomaterials has progressed rapidly toward their eventual use in products ranging from solar cells to medicines. However, tests of possible toxic effects of these substances on human health and the...

Big smash: galaxy clusters in collision.
October 2, 2004... Astronomers last week unveiled the most detailed image ever taken of a rare type of cosmic train wreck--the collision of two of the universe's most massive clusters of galaxies. Taking place over several hundred million years, the merger is the...

Wake up, little surfers: riding waves toward tabletop accelerators.
October 2, 2004... Many physics discoveries of the past century have emerged from giant particle accelerators costing up to billions of dollars and sprawling over acres. Now, three independent research groups in the United States, France, and England have...

Humming along: ocean waves may cause global seismic noise.
October 2, 2004... The slow and nearly constant vibrations of Earth's crust stem from severe winter weather over some of the world's oceans, a new analysis of seismic data suggests. Our planet's outer shell is constantly pulsing. Earthquakes trigger many of...

Beat goes on: carp heart keeps pace when fish lacks oxygen.(Carassius carassius)
October 2, 2004... Without oxygen, a mere human dies in minutes, but a Scandinavian fish not only can survive but also maintains a normal heart-heat for days, say researchers. The crucian carp (Carassius carassius) has long been recognized as a champion...

Two-headed memories: collaboration gives recall lift to elderly.
October 2, 2004... Older adults often find that their memories betray them. A team of Canadian psychologists, led by Michael Ross of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, offers this advice to elderly individuals with memory concerns: Don't go it alone. ...

Pinpointing poachers: gene sleuths map illicit elephant kills.
October 2, 2004... An elephant tusk never forgets its homeland. Every piece of ivory contains DNA unique to its place of origin. Now, researchers say a genetics-based technique they've developed is geographically precise enough to aid forensic pursuit of...

Original microbrews: from Egypt to Peru, archaeologists are unearthing breweries from long ago.
October 2, 2004... Beer is nearly as old as civilization itself. It's mentioned in Sumerian texts from more than 5,000 years ago. Starting in the 1950s, scientists have debated the notion that beer, not bread, was actually the impetus for the development of...

Oddballs: it's easier to pack spheres in some dimensions than in others.
October 2, 2004... In 1998, mathematician Thomas C. Hales made headlines by settling a nearly 400-year-old question: What is the best space-saving way to stack oranges? Johannes Kepler, the natural philosopher who first realized that planets orbit the sun in...

Ancient head case.(Anthropology)(Brief Article)
October 2, 2004... A new analysis by anthropologists of the 1.8-million-year-old skullcap of a Homo erectus child, discovered on the Indonesian island of Java in 1936, indicates that the youngster's brain grew relatively quickly, much as the brains of modern...

Schizophrenia takes fatal turn in China.(Behavior)(Brief Article)
October 2, 2004... Suicides among people with schizophrenia are a major public-health concern in China, according to a new report. One-tenth of all Chinese people who kill themselves suffer from this severe mental disorder, say psychiatrist Michael R. Phillips of...

The tree of life, with tangled roots.(Evolution)(Brief Article)
October 2, 2004... New data support the proposition that two ancient forms of life merged to create the first complex cell. Relatives of the two rudimentary organisms, called prokaryotes, survive as bacteria and related microbes. But they also at some point...

Marrying matter and light.(Physics)(Brief Article)
October 2, 2004... Despite centuries of scientific scrutiny, the ways in which light and matter affect each other remain only partly understood. To get a look at the most fundamental of light-matter interactions, physicists have been trapping one atom and one...

Coffee's curious heart effects.(Food And Nutrition)(Brief Article)
October 2, 2004... Heavy coffee consumption appears to substantially increase an individual's risk of heart attack and sudden death, a Finnish study finds. Even occasional coffee drinkers are not off the hook: Those people had the highest blood pressure of any of...

Tiny scope spies distant planet.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
October 2, 2004... Using a telescope not much bigger than the one Galileo invented nearly 400 years ago, astronomers have discovered a planet orbiting a star 500 light-years from Earth. The 4-inch telescope in the Canary Islands is one of three small, globally...

The Cyanide Canary.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 2, 2004... THE CYANIDE CANARY JOSEPH HILLDORFER AND ROBERT DUGONI EPA Special Agent Hilldorfer was frustrated with his work. He had seen too many corporate polluters get away with their crimes. The case of Scott Dominguez was to be different. The...

E. Encyclopedia Science.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 2, 2004... E. ENCYCLOPEDIA SCIENCE EDITORS FRAN BAINES, PAULA BURTON, ET AL. Published in association with the Web-search company Google, this book details core ideas of science ranging from physics to biology. Each entry is enhanced by a link to an...

A Brief Tour of Human Consciousnes.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 2, 2004... A BRIEF TOUR OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNES V.S. RAMACHANDRAN Why do amputees have feeling in their missing limbs? HOW do people across cultures decide what body image is attractive? How do people known as synesthetes taste sounds and see colors in...

Prize-Winning science Fair Projects for Curious Kids.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 2, 2004... PRIZE-WINNING SCIENCE FAIR PROJECTS FOR CURIOUS KIDS JOE RHATIGAN AND RAIN NEWCOMB Kids should find these 50 experiments to be interesting avenues to exploring the scientific method. Arranged by discipline, the projects, for example,...

Treasures of the Pharaohs.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 2, 2004... TREASURES OF THE PHARAOHS DELIA PEMBERTON WITH CONSULTANT JOANN FLETCHER The ancient city of Thebes, known today as Luxor, was the center of a royal burial ground for Egyptian kings and queens for some 500 years. The region around Thebes,...

On a diet.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 2, 2004... While heart disease victim Jody Gorran's lawsuit against the Atkins empire will be decided in court ("Counting Carbs," SN: 7/17/04, p. 40), the deadlier battle is being waged in the research laboratory. Several studies confirm that...

Correction.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
October 2, 2004... "In the Neandertal Mind" (SN: 9/18/04, p. 183) misidentified Stanley Ambrose. He is a faculty member at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Carotid overhaul: stents and surgery go neck and neck.(This Week)
October 9, 2004... For 40 years, doctors have cleared blockages of the carotid arteries in the neck, which supply blood to the head, by surgically removing plaque from the vessels. The technique contrasts with a common way for treating artery obstructions around...

Planet signs? Sifting a dusty disk.(This Week)
October 9, 2004... Twenty years ago, astronomers peering at the young star Beta Pictoris got their first glimpse of a disk of dusty debris--the sign that planets, asteroids, and comets are forming and then banging together and releasing an abundance of dust. ...

Dawn of the commercial space age.(This Week)(Brief Article)
October 9, 2004... On Oct. 4, SpaceShipOne dropped from its mother ship at an altitude of 50,000 feet, ignited its engine, and then shot to a height of 378,000 feet, or 115.1 kilometers, a world record for a rocket-powered plane. Because the privately funded...

Separate vacations: birds winter apart but return in sync.(This Week)
October 9, 2004... A mated pair of black-tailed godwits may fly off to separate wintering grounds a thousand kilometers apart, but they can return to their breeding grounds almost simultaneously, a migration survey has revealed. The synchrony isn't...

Physiology or medicine.(Nobel prizes: The sweet smell of success: olfactory genes, subatomic particles, and the molecular kiss of death)
October 9, 2004... In recognition of more than a decade of pioneering exploration of the sense of smell, two Americans received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Oct. 4. The researchers, Richard Axel of Columbia University and Linda Buck of the...

Physics.(Nobel prizes: The sweet smell of success: olfactory genes, subatomic particles, and the molecular kiss of death)
October 9, 2004... Three physicists who developed a theory to explain the strong interaction that holds together atomic nuclei--one of the four basic forces in the universe--have won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics. David J. Gross of the University of...

Chemistry.(Nobel prizes: The sweet smell of success: olfactory genes, subatomic particles, and the molecular kiss of death)(Brief Article)
October 9, 2004... And this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to three scientists for their discovery in the early 1980s of how cells mark proteins for destruction. The key turned out to be the molecular tag called ubiquitin. Doomed proteins get the label and...

Evolution's buggy ride: lice leap boldly into human-origins fray.(This Week)
October 9, 2004... Lice aren't nice, at least not when they're attached to people. In a bid for scientific respectability, however, these pestering parasites may have yielded provocative new genetic insights into human evolution. Head lice found on people...

Scrubbing down: free soap, hygiene tips cut kids' illnesses.(This Week)
October 9, 2004... In urban slums, enhancing family hygiene can prevent about half of childhood diarrhea and respiratory illnesses, including pneumonia, researchers working in Pakistan report. Benefits extend even to infants too young to wash themselves. ...

Vitamin boost: from muscle strength to immunity, scientists find new vitamin D benefits.
October 9, 2004... First in a two-part series The story of Vitamin D would appear simple. Take in enough sun or drink enough fortified milk to get the recommended daily amount, and you'll have strong bones. Take a supplement, if you want insurance. But...

They're sequencing a what? Genome scientists go out on a limb of the tree of life.
October 9, 2004... Quick. Would you know a placozoan if it bit you? Not that it actually would attack, unless you were as small as a fleck of algae. And even then, it wouldn't bite but would instead clamp down and ooze digestive enzymes. Yet this summer,...

More space sugar.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
October 9, 2004... How sweet it is! Four years ago, astronomers reported that they had for the first time detected sugar in space (SN: (6/24/00, p. 405). The same team has now found a second source of the simple sugar glycoaldehyde, in a dust-and-gas cloud 26,000...

Adopted protein might be MS culprit.(Biomedicine-)(multiple sclerosis )(Brief Article)
October 9, 2004... When the fatty, sheaths that insulate nerve fibers in the brain become damaged, the result is multiple sclerosis (MS). But the cause of this destruction has long baffled researchers. One group now reports that a protein called syncytin might be...

Car deaths rise days after terror attacks.(Behavior)(Brief Article)
October 9, 2004... Terrorism's deadly effects may not occur all at once. Consider the disturbing tendency, described in a new study in Israel, for the number of automobile fatalities to surge by an average of 35 percent 3 days after each of a series of terrorist...

Fighting cholesterol with saturated fat?(Food And Nutrition)(Brief Article)
October 9, 2004... A saturated fat from beef, linked to a soy-derived compound, makes a promising cholesterol-lowering compound, according to a nutrition scientist at the University of Nebraska. The soy compound, a sterol ester, is one of two plant-based...

Turmeric component kills cancer cells.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
October 9, 2004... The curry spice turmeric gets its yellow color from curcumin. This same compound kills cancer cells in laboratory tests, researchers report in the Sept. 20 International Journal of Cancer. When mixed with cells from human head and neck...

Hurrying a nuclear identity switch.(Physics)(Brief Article)
October 9, 2004... Radioactive beryllium-7 atoms locked inside molecular cages decay extraordinarily quickly, Japanese researchers have found. The speedup is the largest such artificial hastening of an atom's decay rate ever observed. Tsutomu Ohtsuki of...

Global warming won't boost carbon storage in tundra.(Earth Science)(Brief Article)
October 9, 2004... The notion that warmer tundra ecosystems will capture additional carbon dioxide--a favorite argument among skeptics of global warming--isn't supported by new field data. For more than 20 years, researchers have been adding plant nutrients...

Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 9, 2004... CURIOUS MINDS: How a Child Becomes a Scientist JOHN BROCKMAN, ED To motivate readers to study science, Brockman set out to find the common threads and defining moments in the childhoods of some of today's greatest scientific minds. He...

Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 9, 2004... DIGITAL PEOPLE: From Bionic Humans to Androids SIDNEY PERKOWITZ Perkowitz takes readers to the outer limits of robotics and the science of artificial body parts. Replacement knees, hips, and blood vessels number in the millions in the...

Mathematician at the Ballpark: Odds and Probabilities for Baseball Fans.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 9, 2004... MATHEMATICIAN AT THE BALLPARK: Odds and Probabilities for Baseball Fans KEN ROSS Students rarely relish statistics, but baseball fans can't get enough of them--earned run averages, batting averages, slugging percentage (a calculation...

On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 9, 2004... ON THE WING: To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon ALAN TENNANT On the surface, this tale reads as if Hunter S. Thompson decided to pursue a passion for endangered birds. Tennant gets a taste for chasing down the migration...

Murder 2: The Second Casebook of Forensic Detection.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 9, 2004... MURDER 2: The Second Casebook of Forensic Detection COLIN EVANS Evans follows up on his book Casebook of Forensic Detection with this collection of vignettes describing dozens more crimes. These summaries amount to a mini-encyclopedia...

Trash to treasure: junk DNA influences eggs, early embryos.(This Week)
October 16, 2004... The mammalian genome might have a good mason to hold on to its vast collection of what scientists call junk DNA. Some of this genetic clutter may control gene expression in eggs and the earliest embryos, according to a report in the October...

Mars rovers: new evidence of past water.(This Week)
October 16, 2004... Twin rovers on opposite sides of the Red Planet have found additional evidence that liquid water once flowed there, scientists announced last week during a telephone briefing. Designed to last only 3 months, the rovers have been reporting data...

A.M. and P.M. clocks: fruit fly brain has double timekeepers.(This Week)
October 16, 2004... A fruit fly relies on a different group of cells to tick out the rhythm to perk up in the morning than it does to boost evening activity after daytime doldrums, report two research teams. Both teams performed experiments that altered the...

Breakdown: how three chemists took the prize: Nobel laureates discovered how cells label proteins for destruction.(This Week)(Brief Article)
October 16, 2004... This years Nobel Prize in Chemistry has gone to three scientists--two Israeli and one U.S.--for their discovery of the molecular machinery that cells use to dispose of defective or unnecessary proteins. The 25-year-old discovery laid the...

Hearing better in the dark: blindness fuels ability to place distant sounds.(This Week)
October 16, 2004... Whether they lose sight early or later in life, blind people estimate the location of many sounds more accurately than sighted individuals do, a new study finds. In lieu of visual cues, the blind typically learn to perceive subtle acoustic...

Fat fuels PCB damage: diet influences toxic effects leading to heart disease.(Polychlorinated biphenyls)
October 16, 2004... Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been associated with cancer for decades. Since the late 1990s, evidence has also linked the pollutants to cardiovascular disease among workers with long-term exposure to PCBs in electrical equipment....

Change in the weather? Wind farms might affect local climates.(This Week)
October 16, 2004... Large groups of power-generating windmills could have a small but detectable influence on a region's climate, new analyses suggest. Windmills once were quaint several-story-high mechanisms that pumped water or ground grain. They've since...

Dormant cancer: lack of a protein sends tumor cells to bed.(This Week)
October 16, 2004... One standard approach to curing cancer is to kill off malignant cells, and doctors consider their treatment a success when no cancerous cells remain. However, many patients whose test results show no malignancy have their cancer reappear years...

Vitamin D: what's enough? Many people may need much more.
October 16, 2004... Second in a two-part series. A few minutes of sun exposure on a summer day can generate huge quantities of vitamin D in a person's body. A cholesterol-like substance in the skin absorbs ultraviolet (UV) energy and creates vitamin D. Then,...

What's wrong with this picture? Educating via analyses of science in movies and TV.
October 16, 2004... The arrival of a new ice age in a matter of weeks? Setting the Earth's core rotating with a few nuclear bombs? Fault zones that gape open to swallow people, speeding trains, and even small towns? "Get real," say earth scientists decrying the...

Extra rainfall may stem warming in Midwest.(Earth Science)(Brief Article)
October 16, 2004... Predicted increases in min in parts of the Midwest may reduce the temperature effect that scientists expect from global warming during the next few decades. Computer simulations of the climate in the lower 48 United States suggest that if...

To freeze this liquid, add heat.(Physics)(Brief Article)
October 16, 2004... Researchers in France have discovered a liquid mixture that freezes into a waxy crystalline solid when heated. It appears to be the first solution to exhibit an abnormal heat-induced transition from liquid to solid rather than the other way...

Martian water everywhere.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
October 16, 2004... Mars once had an ocean at least a half-kilometer deep and larger than the combined area of all five Great Lakes on Earth. That's the conclusion of researchers who have analyzed data collected by orbiting spacecraft as well as the Mars rover...

Verbal sighting in brains of the blind.(Neuroscience)(Brief Article)
October 16, 2004... Brain areas that typically play a key role in vision instead contribute to language skills among blind people, a new study finds. This observation underscores the brain's ability to adapt to individual circumstances, say Leonardo G. Cohen of...

Human antibody halts SARS in hamsters.(Biomedicine)(severe acute respiratory, syndrome)(Brief Article)
October 16, 2004... Scientists are working feverishly to develop treatments for severe acute respiratory, syndrome (SARS), unsure of when and where that recently discovered viral infection might reappear. Several potential vaccines have progressed to the testing...

Kids' vaccine guards adults too, for now.(Vaccines)(Brief Article)
October 16, 2004... Following the national introduction in 2000 of a vaccine for children against seven common strains of pneumococcus, serious infections caused by the bacteria decreased in children. The resulting dip in the microbe's overall prevalence in kids...

New bacteria linked to vaginal infections.(Bacterial Ecology)(Brief Article)
October 16, 2004... Several species of normally harmless bacteria flourish in the vagina. But sometimes this internal ecosystem tunas nasty, causing what's called bacterial vaginosis, which can produce a fishy odor and milky, discharge. Researchers haven't been...

Drug-resistant staph causes more pneumonia.(Emerging Pathogens)(Brief Article)
October 16, 2004... Last winter, a recently discovered bacterial variant became a major cause of severe pneumonia among people who caught the flu. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, has long been a menace in hospitals, where it can spread...

Chance: a Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market, and Just About Everything Else.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 16, 2004... AMIR D. ACZEL Our fascination with chance dates to prehistoric times, when cavemen rolled dice made of sheep bones. Ever since then, games of chance have been prevalent in many cultures. There is some evidence in the Talmud that rabbis...

The Geese of Beaver Bog.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 16, 2004... BERND HEINRICH Six summers ago, Heinrich's family raised a gosling until it was ready to be set free. Heinrich took the bird to the beaver bog near his home in Vermont. From that time on, he obsessively visited the bog to keep an eye on...

The New Consumers: the Influence of Affluence on the Environment.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 16, 2004... NORMAN MYERS AND JENNIFER KENT Americans and Europeans are the most voracious consumers in the world. However, as Myers and Kent report, people in developing countries are catching up Emerging middle classes in China and India, in...

Powerful Medicines: the Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 16, 2004... JERRY AVORN Practicing the art of medicine, Avorn points out, entails finding the middle ground between a drug's benefits and its occasional downfalls. Further complicating the equation today, however, are costs that are increasing in an...

Sin Boldly! Dr. Dave's Guide to Writing the College Paper.(Books: a selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 16, 2004... DAVID R. WILLIAMS This revised volume offers students the inside scoop on how to write a good paper. Williams' guidance comes from his current perspective as a college professor of English as well as his past experience writing a boatload...

Hubble grumble.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 16, 2004... The cover type "Farewell to Hubble?" ("End of the Line for Hubble?" SN: 7/24/04, p. 56) makes me wonder why we haven't seen the headline "Farewell to the Current NASA Administrator?" The only reason I have heard for the cancellation of the...

Suicidal thoughts.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 16, 2004... I have been puzzled at the consternation over the findings in "Suicide Watch: Antidepressants get large-scale inspection" (SN: 7/24/04, p. 51). It's common knowledge among people who treat patients with major depression that the time of...

Medical decisions in question: mental incapacity missed by docs.(research report)
October 23, 2004... It's bad enough to be a patient in a hospital. What's worse, according to a team of British researchers, is that a substantial minority of medical patients is legally incompetent to make decisions about their treatment, yet their physicians...

Graphite in flatland: carbon sheets may rival nanotubes.(new research on graphene films)
October 23, 2004... Anyone who has written with a pencil may have unwittingly made a few traces of a promising new nanomaterial. Among the thick smears of graphite deposited when a pencil' rubs along paper are probably some carbon films only a few atoms thick,...

What flakes.(graphene)(Brief Article)
October 23, 2004... A 1-atom-thick flake of graphene has settled onto a silicon dioxide surface (burnt-orange background in top image). In some regions, it folds back on itself like fabric (lightest orange). Atomic-force-microscope image represents a field 10...

Messy findings: planets encounter a violent world.(origin of planets incites new research)
October 23, 2004... Rocky planets such as Earth are born through countless acts of violence--the collision and merging of many smaller bodies. A new study reveals that some planets continue to take a beating hundreds of millions of years after they've formed. ...

Reworking intuition: business simulations spark rapid workplace renovations.(business management)
October 23, 2004... About 3 years ago, psychologist Lia DiBello surmounted a business challenge that would have stumped Donald Trump. Armed with an unconventional theory of how people learn, DiBello and her colleagues coaxed some key employees at three financially...

Creepy-crawly care: maggots move into mainstream medicine.(maggot-debridement therapy)
October 23, 2004... Pamela Mitchell is no stranger to modern medical care. Now 52, the former waitress from Akron, Ohio, began getting regular insulin injections at the age of 10, after she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Twenty years ago, she received a...

Reversible gel restores artwork.(Materials Science-research work)(Brief Article)
October 23, 2004... In an advance that could help conservationists restore paintings to their original glory, chemists have developed a cleaning product that switches from a free-flowing liquid to a viscous gel. The researchers tested the material on a...

Chimps show skill in termite fishing.(Anthropological research on Congo chimpanzees)(Brief Article)
October 23, 2004... Video cameras recording activity at six termite nests in a central-African forest have revealed how local chimpanzees snag the insects for snacks. Tapes from a recent 6-month period show chimps making and wielding one set of termite-fishing...

Branching polymer could heal cataract wounds.(Biomedicine research report)(Brief Article)
October 23, 2004... Cataract surgery might get a little easier thanks to a transparent gel that seals surgical incisions in the eye better than standard sutures do. Approximately 11 million patients worldwide undergo cataract surgery each year. In the...

Single gene turns flu deadly.(Infectious Diseases-new research)(Brief Article)
October 23, 2004... The 1918 Spanish-influenza outbreak remains the worst pandemic in recorded history, killing more than 20 million people worldwide. With an eye toward preventing similar health disasters, researchers have long speculated about why the 1918...

Cramming bits into pits.(new research in technology )(Brief Article)
October 23, 2004... Here's a new angle--actually more than 300 new angles--on boosting the quantities of movies and music that optical discs can hold. Compact discs and DVDs store digital data as a pattern of reflective areas and less-reflective microscopic...

Cavefish blinded by gene expression.(Zoology research)(Brief Article)
October 23, 2004... Last year, researchers raised the possibility that Mexican blind cavefish once could see but traded in their vision for bigger jaws and teeth (SN: 8/23/03, p. 126). Those same scientists now report genetic evidence bolstering their theory. ...

Tiny tubes tune in colors.(research in physics)(Brief Article)
October 23, 2004... For more than a century, electric devices have been transmitting and receiving radio signals via antennas that range from sky-scraping radio towers to telescoping cell phone aerials. Now, scientists have shown that far smaller antennas can...

Dancing the heat away.(Physics)(Brief Article)
October 23, 2004... On the nanoscale, heat can flow in unexpected ways. This uncertainty poses challenges and opportunities for researchers aiming to understand and exploit the behavior of tiny structures. Anomalous heat flow recently became apparent in the...