Science News articles from October 2006

Science News archives from October 2006

Improving the view: treatment reverses macular degeneration.(ranibizumab)
October 7, 2006... People with a relentless eye disease now have a better-than-average prospect of recovering some vision, thanks to a new drug that takes a lesson from an anticancer strategy, two studies show. Age-related macular degeneration is the leading...

Shop until you can't stop: compulsive buying affects both men and women.(Survey)
October 7, 2006... Talk about buyer's remorse. A new national telephone survey indicates that nearly 6 percent of adults find themselves unable to resist frequent shopping binges that leave them saddled with debt, anxiety, and depression. Buying gone bad,...

Jet set: astronomers identify the makeup of quasar streams.
October 7, 2006... The particle jets streaming from the neighborhood of a supermassive black hole punch their way out of their home galaxies and extend hundreds of thousands of light-years beyond. Astronomers this week reported that they have finally identified...

Hot, hotter, hot: climate seesawed during dinosaur age.
October 7, 2006... Dinosaurs, too, endured climate change. Although scientists had speculated that the world some 120 million years ago was unvaryingly hot, climate fluctuated dramatically, a new report argues. Twice during a 250,000-year period in the reign of...

Nobel prizes recognize things great and small: awards focus on birth of universe and the workings of cells.(Andrew Fire, Craig Mello, John C. Mather, George E Smoot )
October 7, 2006... The 2006 Nobel prizes in the sciences were announced early this week. U.S. scientists swept the field. Physiology or Medicine Eight years after revealing a mechanism that cells use to regulate protein production, a pair of U.S....

Wasting deer: deer saliva and blood can carry prions.
October 7, 2006... For the first time, researchers have shown that saliva alone can transmit a brain-destroying disease from one animal to another. Three oral doses of saliva from a deer sick with chronic wasting disease passed the infection to other deer...

Venting concerns: exploring and protecting deep-sea communities.(Cover story)
October 7, 2006... Researchers cruising the South Pacific between Tonga and Fiji study huge snails that, aided by an abundance of bacteria housed in their gills, feed off plumes of metal-rich compounds at active hydrothermal vents. Scientists working off the...

Cell surface stories: miniature electrodes probe diminutive domains.
October 7, 2006... The rat in the plastic box has a drug habit. Every 5 minutes or so, he presses a lever that sends a shot of cocaine through a catheter into his veins. Even more unusual is his "rat hat," the data-transmitting headgear that monitors the animal's...

A discordant name for a dwarf planet.(PLANETARY SCIENCE)
October 7, 2006... The largest known object at the fringes of the solar system, the icy body whose discovery heated up the debate about planethood, has an apt new name. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) announced on Sept. 14 that the body, which had...

Reading the tale of an ancient river.(EARTH SCIENCE)(Brief article)
October 7, 2006... Ocean-floor sediment near England holds material deposited there during the last ice age by what was then Europe's largest river system. A new analysis suggests that the waterway began carrying substantial amounts of precipitation and meltwater...

Bad Alzheimer's proteins sow disorder in the brain.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief article)
October 7, 2006... Like a bad seed that overtakes an entire garden, a single abnormal protein may spoil other proteins nearby and begin the progression of Alzheimer's disease, a new study suggests. Recent research has suggested that a protein called...

Oversize supernova.(Brief article)
October 7, 2006... Although they can't fully explain why a star blows up, astronomers thought that they had accurately determined the maximum mass that a star could have before exploding as a connnon type of supernova. Now, they've found a star that breaks the...

Cigarettes and lead linked to attention disorder.(EPIDEMIOLOGY)(Brief article)
October 7, 2006... Nearly half a million cases of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder among U.S. children are reined to exposures to lead or their mothers' smoking while pregnant, a nationwide study suggests. The two environmental hazards might account for...

Silky feet.(ANIMAL SCIENCE)(Zebra tarantulas)(Brief article)
October 7, 2006... Zebra tarantulas can secrete silk from their feet, researchers have found. The discovery raises questions about the original function of silk. Spiders step securely on surfaces because of the hold of thousands of hairs on their feet....

Krill kick up a storm of ocean mixing.(OCEANOGRAPHY)(Brief article)
October 7, 2006... A single Pacific krill doesn't grow as big as its cocktail-shrimp cousins. Yet a swarm of krill making its daily commute in a Canadian inlet boosted water turbulence by factors ranging from 2,000 to 20,000. That's the result of the first...

U.S. population to surpass 300 million.(United States. Bureau of the Census)(Brief article)
October 7, 2006... At approximately the midpoint of this month, the population of the United States will hit 300 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Seconds later, it will eclipse that mark. The bureau calculates that a new birth adds to the...

The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 7, 2006... THE TROUBLE WITH PHYSICS: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next LEE SMOLIN In their quest to understand nature at its deepest level, many scientists have been led astray, according to Smolin. The...

Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 7, 2006... NOT EVEN WRONG: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law PETER WOIT String theory has become the most popular area of pursuit among theoretical physicists seeking a unified theory of elementary particles....

The New Psychology of Love.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 7, 2006... THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE ROBERT J. STERNBERG AND KARIN WEIS, EDS. What is love? No one definition exists, even though love drives much of human interaction and that artists and scientists ponder it endlessly. In this follow-up to a...

The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 7, 2006... THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF NATURE: How Science Makes Sense of the World PETER DEAR Science has become the dominant approach to human understanding of the world. By extension, scientists are viewed as fonts of wisdom, to whom people turn...

Driving to Mars.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 7, 2006... DRIVING TO MARS WILLIAM L. FOX "Two dozen scientists travel annually to an uninhabited island 900 miles from the North Pole. There, they practice for a trip to Mars. Haughton crater is a 12-mile-wide, 1,000-foot-deep chasm that is the...

Correction.(Correction notice)
October 7, 2006... The wrong caption and credit were printed for one image in "Temperamental Monsters" (SN: 9/23/06, p. 200). Here is the correct information. DISTANT OUTBURST--The bright, massive star V1 (arrow) in the galaxy NGC 2363, which lies about 11...

Smoke out: bartenders' lungs appreciate ban.(Scotland bans smoking in public places)
October 14, 2006... Pub workers in Scotland breathed easier and showed better respiratory health shortly after a nationwide ban on smoking inside public places went into effect earlier this year, scientists report. Other research had suggested that worker...

Life blood: drug stops mothers' bleeding after births.(postpartum hemorrhage)
October 14, 2006... A drug sometimes used to induce abortions can stem bleeding after childbirth, according to a 3-year study in India. It might save the lives of millions of women in developing countries, the researchers say. Worldwide, the leading cause of a...

Teasing apart nanotubes: fast-spun carbon fibers may feed an industry.
October 14, 2006... Nanoscale tubes of carbon could potentially lead to novel technologies, such as electronic circuits that are much faster and more compact than those made today. However, the batches of carbon nanotubes that manufacturers now produce are...

Messiness rules: in high dimensions, disorder packs tightest.
October 14, 2006... Should you find yourself with a 60-dimensional suitcase, the best way to pack it may be the easiest: Throw in everything in a jumble. That's the way to fit the most high-dimensional spheres into a fixed space, new research suggests. The...

Well traveled: gene split arose early in domesticated goats.
October 14, 2006... Present-day domestic goats may look humble, but they harbor more genetic diversity than any other livestock species. In fact, analyses of goats' mitochondrial DNA have shown that these animals evolved through five distinct maternal lines that...

Courting costs: male prairie dogs seem too busy mating to dodge predators.
October 14, 2006... Mating season makes the normally fast and tough male prairie dog so preoccupied that he's easy pickings for predators, researchers find. In a study of prairie dogs in the wild, a fox and a few goshawks caught adult males only during the...

Nearly naked: large swath of Pacific lacks seafloor sediment.
October 14, 2006... Oceanographers have discovered a broad, almost-bare patch of seafloor in the remote South Pacific. An unusual combination of circumstances has left the region without the mineral and organic sediments hundreds of meters deep that are typical...

Pretty in pictures: details of molecular machinery gain Nobel.(Roger D. Kornberg )
October 14, 2006... In yeast, the enzyme that transcribes the protein-making instructions encoded in DNA consists of roughly 30,000 atoms. Five years ago, Roger D. Kornberg published a solo portrait and an action shot of this molecular machinery in atomic detail....

Enigmatic eruption: the strange case of V838 Monocerotis.
October 14, 2006... An erupting star near the outskirts of the Milky Way has become one of the most puzzling objects in the galaxy. The star's outburst has set aglow a never-before-seen array of dust eddies, shells, and spirals--a cosmic portrait reminiscent of...

Warming up to hyperthermia: heat therapy could improve existing cancer treatments.
October 14, 2006... In March 1999, Jason Foster was unpleasantly surprised by a BB-size lump that he found in one of his testicles. He ignored it for a week, hoping that it would go away. But instead, the lump swelled to the size of a pea. "I had alarm bells going...

Ancient hot spell is linked to copious carbon dioxide.(Brief article)
October 14, 2006... The presence of a particular mineral in ancient rock suggests that during an extended warm period in Earth's past, the atmosphere held at least triple the concentration of carbon dioxide that it does today, a new analysis shows. Between 52...

Right brain area linked to fairness.(Brief article)
October 14, 2006... The ability to control selfish impulses in order to reject an unfair deal depends on a specific right brain area, a new study finds. A team led by Daria Knoch of the University of Zurich focused on a game in which one person makes an offer...

A nanotechnology report card.(National Research Council)(Brief article)
October 14, 2006... Research on how nanotechnology affects human health and the environment must be expanded, states a National Research Council report. The National Nanotechnology Initiative, created by the Clinton administration in 2000, coordinates the many...

Novel approach fights leprosy.(Brief article)
October 14, 2006... Antibiotic typically used to fight sinus infections and pneumonia shows remarkable potency against leprosy. In a study of leprosy patients in the Philippines, Robert H. Gelber, a physician at the University of California, San Francisco and...

Hotel-room surfaces can harbor viruses.
October 14, 2006... Rhinovirus, which is responsible for roughly half of all common colds, survives on surfaces in hotel rooms for hours and can be transferred from there to people, a study shows. J. Owen Hendley, a pediatrician at the University of Virginia...

Meetings.
October 14, 2006... Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy San Francisco, Calif., September 27-30

Statins defend against fungus-caused sepsis.(Brief article)
October 14, 2006... When a blood infection causes an inflammatory reaction that attacks the entire circulatory system, the result is a condition called sepsis that's fatal about 40 percent of the time. A new study suggests that sepsis brought on by a fungal...

Many infections tied to medical settings.(Brief article)
October 14, 2006... More than one-fourth of skin or muscle infections that require hospitalization originate from microbes acquired in a clinic, hospital, or other medical-care setting, researchers find. Using data from 134 hospitals in the northeastern United...

Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 14, 2006... INFRASTRUCTURE: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape BRIAN HAYES The typical modern landscape is telephone poles, water towers, and train tracks. This unusual book uses the model of the field guide to identify and describe these...

King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 14, 2006... KING OF INFINITE SPACE: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry SIOBHAN ROBERTS This book is an homage to Donald coxeter, whose efforts, Roberts asserts, saved classical geometry from virtual elimination from modern mathematics....

The Science of James Bond: From Bullets to Bowler Hats to Boat Jumps, the Real Technology Behind 007's Fabulous Films.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 14, 2006... THE SCIENCE OF JAMES BOND: From Bullets tO Bowler Hats to Boat Jumps, the Real Technology behind 007's Fabulous Films LOIS H. GRESH AND ROBERT WEINBERG The most famous fictional spy accomplished many seemingly impossible feats armed...

The Demon Under the Microscope.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 14, 2006... THE DEMON UNDER THE MICROSCOPE THOMAS HAGER A century ago, physicians sought a way to overcome their helplessness against often-deadly infections. They found it during World War II in the form of sulfa drugs, precursors to modern...

Codebreaker: The HiStory of Codes and Ciphers, from the Ancient Pharaohs to Quantum Cryptography.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 14, 2006... CODEBREAKER: The HiStory of Codes and Ciphers, from the Ancient Pharaohs to Quantum Cryptography STEPHEN PINCOCK Since the early clays of written symbols, scribes have used encryption for amusement as well as for concealment. Pincock...

Name game.(Letter to the editor)
October 14, 2006... "Named medical trials garner extra attention" (SN: 8/5/06, p. 93), I think, has it backwards. It's not that labeled trials are more likely to be funded. Rather, well-funded, large trials are more likely to be named. We research chemists label...

Behind the IQ numbers.(Letter to the editor)
October 14, 2006... I suspect the findings in "Racial IQ Gap Narrows: Blacks gain 4 to 7 points on whites" (SN: 8/5/06, p. 85) might be correlated with the reduction in lead exposure over the same timeframe. I wonder if the greater reduction in early-childhood...

Whom do you trust?(Letter to the editor)
October 14, 2006... "Outside Looking In" (SN: 8/12/06, p. 106) states, "Yet individuals with Asperger syndrome can still look at a face and assess characteristics such as trustworthiness." Statements like that are mystifying to me. I think I am about average in...

Fuzzy maybe, warm no.(Letter to the editor)
October 14, 2006... Regarding "Obsidian artifacts can record ancient climate" (SN: 8/12/06,p. 110), did the researchers take into account that most arrow points and spearheads would have been in contact with the inside of game, a considerably warmer and more humid...

Autism's DNA trail: gene variant tied to developmental disorder.
October 21, 2006... Scientists have taken a promising step forward in untangling the genetic roots of autism. Inheritance of a common variant of a gene that influences immunity, gastrointestinal repair, and brain growth substantially raises the chances of...

Horns vs. sperm: male beetles on tight equipment budget.
October 21, 2006... A group of dung beetle species that sprout horns like tiny elk, rhinos, or sci-fi invaders often face trade-otis between horn and testes sizes, say researchers. Among the 2,000 species of Onthophagus dung beetles, males sport various...

Back on the Table? Element 118 is served up again.
October 21, 2006... New research suggests that the periodic table may once again reach 118. A team of nuclear chemists from the United States and Russia has announced the brief appearance of the unnamed element, the heaviest to date. A report of element 118...

Quirky cardiology: crocs' hearts may aid their digestion.(crocodile)
October 21, 2006... The crocodile's ability to direct oxygen-depleted blood to its stomach may be instrumental in digesting large, bony meals and recovering from hunting-induced accumulation of lactic acid, some researchers propose. But other scientists argue that...

A sunrise view of Mars.(Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter)(Brief article)
October 21, 2006... Darkened gullies slice down the edge of a crater in one of the first high-resolution images sent by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The sharp edges of the channels suggest that they are no more than a few million years old. NASA scientists say...

Vanishing actor: physicists unveil first invisibility cloak.(Duke University, University of London. Imperial College of Science and Technology, SensorMetrix )
October 21, 2006... It might not seem like much compared with Harry Potter's magic garment, but the first functional invisibility cloak has emerged from a North Carolina laboratory. The disk of concentric fiberglass-and-copper bands--about the size of a...

Assault on Andromeda: nearby galaxy had recent collision.
October 21, 2006... If the dinosaurs ever looked skyward, they might have been treated to a rare spectacle. About 210 million years ago, a small galaxy plunged into Andromeda--the spiral galaxy closest to the Milky Way. Streamers of stars created by the collision...

Prep work: bird-flu vaccine might work better with primer.
October 21, 2006... Avian-influenza virus is evolving, so no one can predict the exact genetic makeup of a killer bird-flu strain that would spread from person to person and cause a pandemic. So, if such a strain arose, manufacturers would be hard-pressed to...

Ring shots: Cassini spies new bands, other features, around Saturn.
October 21, 2006... Add another glimmer of glamour to the icy jewels that adorn the outer solar system s largest planet. On Sept. 15, the Cassini spacecraft spied two new rings around Saturn. The craft had an unusual viewpoint. It was in Saturn s shadow on the...

Fit to be tied: impatience with string theory boils over.
October 21, 2006... Jazz musician Ken Hatfield entitled his compact disc released in June String Theory. A quilt-maker, Denyse Schmidt, offers quilts with the same title in two color schemes. Elizabeth Dewberry's novel His Lovely Wife (2006, Harcourt), about a...

Swirling seas, crystal balls: spirals of triangles crinkle into intricate structures.(spidron )(Cover story)
October 21, 2006... A field of triangles crumples and twists into a wavy crystalline sea. A crystal ball sprouts spiraling, labyrinthine passages. Faceted bricks stack snugly into a tidy, compact structure. Underlying each of these objects is a remarkable...

Record-breaking galaxy.(Masanori Iye of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan discovers a galaxy )(Brief article)
October 21, 2006... Looking ever deeper into space and farther back in time, astronomers have found a galaxy more distant than any other known in the universe. Using the large Subaru telescope atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea, researchers recorded a galaxy as it appeared...

Do acid blockers let microbes reach the colon?(Brief article)
October 21, 2006... Suppressing stomach acid while taking antibiotics may allow antibiotic-resistant bacteria to colonize the intestines, a study shows. Researchers had previously linked stomach-acid suppression to pneumonia (SN: 10/30/04, p. 277). To test the...

Antiviral drug may limit herpes spread.(Brief article)
October 21, 2006... In people who have had at least one outbreak of blistering from genital herpes, the drug famciclovir sharply reduces virus shedding from the external portions of the genitalia, a new study finds. Such shedding can spread the virus between...

Prepared brains achieve insight.(Brief article)
October 21, 2006... Sudden verbal insights arise from distinct brain operations that focus attention and facilitate access to word knowledge, a new investigation suggests. A team led by John Kounios of Drexel University in Philadelphia used electric sensors...

Tropical diversity came with time.(evolution in tropical zones is less than temperate zones)(Brief article)
October 21, 2006... Species in the richly diverse tropics don't evolve any faster than do species in temperate zones, researchers report. Rather, the tropics accumulated its astounding abundance of species largely because life has thrived there so long. ...

Cloning is most efficient using non-stem cells.(Brief article)
October 21, 2006... Fully matured cells can be used to clone animals; in fact, using such cells for this purpose may be more efficient than using stem cells, scientists report. Since Dolly the cloned sheep was born in 1996, some scientists have speculated...

Waters near croplands impair frogs' immunity.(Brief article)
October 21, 2006... Pesticide-containing waters leave frogs more susceptible to fungal infections than pristine environments do, new field data suggest. Tyrone Hayes and his collaborators at the University of California, Berkeley located tadpoles of Rana...

Air's oxygen content constrains insect growth.(Brief article)
October 21, 2006... The size to which insects grow is limited by how much oxygen they can route to tissues in their legs, new airway measurements suggest. The researcher knew that some insects grow particularly large when reared in high-oxygen laboratories and...

Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 21, 2006... GREGOR MENDEL: Planting the Seeds of Genetics SIMON MAWER Though most biology students know Gregor Mendel as the father of genetics, they know little about the man himself. According to lore, he was simply a monk who worked with peas...

Creatures of Accident: The Rise of the Animal Kingdom.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 21, 2006... CREATURES OF ACCIDENT: The Rise of the Animal Kingdom WALLACE ARTHUR Proponents of intelligent design argue that life is too complex to have arisen by chance and that it must have come about at the hands of a creator. But Arthur, a...

The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 21, 2006... THE ARTIST AND THE MATHEMATICIAN: The Story of NIcolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed AMIR D. ACZEL In the early part of the past century, influential French mathematicians such as Alexandre Grothendieck, Andre...

The Flying Circus of Physics, 2d ed.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 21, 2006... THE FLYING CIRCUS OF PHYSICS: 2nd Edition JEARL WALKER Burdened by tedious equations and difficult terminology, many a student has wondered what physics has to do with real life. This question inspired Walker, an unusual physicist who...

Birds: A Visual Guide.(Brief article)(Book review)
October 21, 2006... BIRDS: A Visual Guide JOANNA BURGER This latest addition to Firefly's Visual Guide series explores the extraordinary diversity of birds. These animals have uniquely fascinated us because of their flying and their often-dazzling...

Fish story?(Letter to the editor)
October 21, 2006... To argue that the concentrations reported in "Macho Moms: Perchlorate pollutant masculinizes fish" (SN: 8/12/06, p. 99) are environmentally relevant is misleading. Those concentrations are usually in groundwater, not surface waters. I've been...

Poor Pluto.(Letter to the editor)
October 21, 2006... I was sorry to learn Pluto did not qualify as a planet ("New Solar System? Twelve planets and counting," SN: 8/19/06, p. 115, and "Doggone! Pluto gets a planetary demotion," SN: 9/2/06, p. 149). Pluto has a diameter comparable with the Earth's...

Genome buzz: honeybee DNA raises social questions.(deoxyribonucleic acid)
October 28, 2006... Scientists have officially unveiled the DNA code of the western honeybee, the first genome to be sequenced for an animal with ultrastratified societies. The bees are among the select species in which a few individuals reproduce while...

Med-start kids: pros, cons of Ritalin for preschool ADHD.(attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder)
October 28, 2006... The stimulant known as Ritalin displays pluses and minuses in preschoolers receiving the drug for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to the first large, long-term study of the drug's effects in such youngsters. In...

Mastodons in musth: tusks may chronicle battles between males.
October 28, 2006... Damaged segments on fossils of male mastodons' tusks hint that the creatures engaged in fierce combat with each other during a specific time almost every year of their adult lives, a new study suggests. That behavior parallels the annual period...

Lung scan: CT may catch some treatable cancers.(computed tomography)
October 28, 2006... A controversial study suggests that computed tomography (CT) scans catch lung cancer early in smokers and other high-risk people, enabling doctors to intervene when they still can improve a patient's chances of survival. However, some...

Vanishing devices: doctors implant disappearing stents, heart patches.(heart implants made of polylactic acid developed by Abbott Laboratories Inc. (Abbott Park, Illinois))
October 28, 2006... Novel heart devices fashioned primarily from materials that the body can absorb or break down have made their debut in patients. This week, cardiologists presented the first clinical studies of two such devices at a conference on...

Trimming down cancer: fat could hinder body's fight against disease.
October 28, 2006... Fatty tissue secretes substances that make it harder for the body to battle cancer, a study in mice suggests. Previous studies showed that obese people have excess risk of getting cancers such as those of the breast and colon. However,...

A whale's tale: puzzling marine compounds are natural.(halogenated chemicals found in marine mammals)
October 28, 2006... An 85-year-old vial of oil from a whaling ship has revealed that a mysterious group of organic chemicals resembling human-made compounds are naturally produced in the sea. A decade ago, scientists monitoring marine mammals' flesh for...

Why play dead? Rethinking what used to be obvious.(animal feigning death)
October 28, 2006... Gary Gerald studies animal movement, so when two female brown snakes in the lab had babies, he wanted to see them in motion. He watched them crawling on a solid surface, then moved the youngsters to water in a modified gutter. But the system...

Satanic winds: looking at dust devils on Earth and Mars.
October 28, 2006... How to study a dust devil: Sit in your truck on a dry lake bed and wait for a minitornado to spring up within sight. Eyeball its path and guess where it's headed. Drive to a spot in that direction, shut off the engine, and hope that the vortex...