Science News articles from October 2008

Science News archives from October 2008

Politics needs science for sound policymaking.(FROM THE EDITOR)
October 11, 2008... Politics and science are a lot like oil and water. One involves machines, the other is essential for life. And they don't mix--at least not very well. Nevertheless, politics and science should sometimes be emulsified, particularly in...

Scientific observations.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Stephen Hawking on particle accelerators)(Brief article)
October 11, 2008... "We don't know what we will find when we run the LHC. If we did, it wouldn't be worth spending all that time and money on doing the experiment, The most exciting result would be something we don't expect. That has often been our experience in...

Science past: October 11, 1958.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
October 11, 2008... FISHY CONVERSATIONS--Spiny lobsters are like men, their voices become deeper as they grow older. This is one of the preliminary findings of Dr. James M. Moulton of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me., who spent this summer at the Bermuda Biological...

Science future.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)(Calendar)
October 11, 2008... October 16-25 Imagine Science Film Festival to be held in New York City. Visit www.imaginesciencefilms.com October 28-30 ChemEng08 to be held in Birmingham, England. Visit www.chemengO8.com November 1 The Dibner Hall of...

Science stats: unacceptable exposure.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)(Statistical data)
October 11, 2008... Percent of children living in counties in the United States in which levels of each air pollutant in 2006 rose above allowable EPA levels Ozone 52.55% Particulate Matter ([less...

Atom & cosmos.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Brief article)
October 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As the summer wanes on Mars' northern plain, the Phoenix Lander works on. Read "Racing against the Martian winter" for an update on the robotic geologist and its findings. Pictured above is a 3-D image of a Martian...

Math trek.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Brief article)
October 11, 2008... The search for the largest prime number continues, with the latest behemoth weighing in at almost 13 million digits. We'd show a photo, but that would require about 30 miles of magazine type. Read "Largest known prime number found."

How bizarre.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(basketball sounds)(Brief article)
October 11, 2008... Unlike a ball dribbled on a gym floor, a basketball that hits concrete lets out a thump and a high-pitched ring. Physicist Jonathan Katz of Washington University in St. Louis was inspired by his son to figure out why. After a few...

With a twinkle, pulsating stars could deliver signals from ET: neutrino beams may turn Cepheids into messengers.(STORY ONE)
October 11, 2008... Searching for signals from extraterrestrials can be a ticklish business. Astronomer John Learned thinks tickling certain stars in just the right way might be a good strategy for ET to phone Earth. Those stars, known as Cepheid variables,...

Back story: searching for signals.(IN THE NEWS)(Brief article)
October 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 1959 Philip Morrison (shown) and Giuseppe Cocconi write "Searching for Interstellar Communications," now considered a founding paper in the modern SETI field. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 1960 Project...

Astronomers snap extrasolar image: shot may be the first of an exoplanet orbiting a sunlike star.(Atom & Cosmos)
October 11, 2008... After years of false alarms, astronomers may finally have recorded the first image of a planet orbiting a sunlike star beyond the solar system. The body, about eight times Jupiter's mass, lies exceptionally far from its presumed parent...

Around the ring.(Atom & Cosmos)(Brief article)
October 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] One short trip for a proton, one not-so-giant step for mankind, it turns out. On September 10 scientists at the Large Hadron Collider, near Geneva, successfully steered the first beam of protons around the...

Mom can increase her child's risk of depression via nurture alone: new study suggests fathers don't have the same influence.(Humans)
October 11, 2008... Some youngsters get depressed in the absence of any genetic legacy, a new investigation finds. Researchers report that having a depressed mother substantially ups a teenager's likelihood of becoming depressed, even if he or she was adopted...

Pain relief you can believe in: study finds religious thought alleviates hurt for Catholics.(Humans)(Brief article)
October 11, 2008... Brain researchers are exploring what might be called faith-based analgesia. Stimulating a religious state of mind in devout Catholics triggers brain processes associated with substantial relief from physical pain, report neuroscientist...

Giant honeybees skilled at the wave: attacking hornets repelled when colony shimmers en masse.(Life)
October 11, 2008... Like fans in a stadium, giant honeybees at their nest make big, rippling audience waves, new video shows. And the bee waves are spooky enough to drive away predatory hornets, an international research team reports online September 10 in...

Female frogs play the field: multiple partners improve odds of offspring survival.(Life)(Brief article)
October 11, 2008... The danger of putting all your eggs in one basket is very real for a small Australian frog. A new study has found that female Pseudophryne bibronii frogs lay eggs fathered by up to eight different males in up to eight different nests. The...

Researchers dig new ant species: bizarre insect suggests ancient underground world.(Life)(Martialis heureka)
October 11, 2008... A new ant discovered in the Amazon looks so odd that scientists are choosing Latin names that playfully suggest the creature comes from Mars. Yet the species Martialis heureka could help rewrite the history of ants on Earth. Found in...

This bite won't hurt.(Life)(Brief article)
October 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] By dissecting the physics of mosquito bites, researchers have uncovered some of the bugs' stealthy tricks. Melur Ramasubramanian of North Carolina State University in Raleigh and his colleagues wondered how a...

Continental clash cooled climate: when India and Asia collided, sources of C[O.sub.2] disappeared.(Earth)
October 11, 2008... When the tectonic plate carrying India slammed into Asia about 50 million years ago, the ensuing geological changes triggered a long-term cooling trend--a trend that later enabled Antarctic ice sheets to grow, a new study suggests. Before...

Aged crust.(Earth)(Report)(Brief article)
October 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Northern Quebec may host the world's oldest rocks. Geochemical analyses reported in the Sept. 26 Science hint that some rocks (shown here with a hammer for scale) along the eastern shores of Hudson Bay are 4.28...

Late nights tied to inflammation: key protein spikes in women with mild sleep deprivation.(Body & Brain)(Clinical report)
October 11, 2008... Staying up late makes for a swell time, but not in a good way. A study in the Sept. 15 Biological Psychiatry offers more evidence that lack of sleep is linked to inflammation, which can lead to disease. After one night of too little sleep,...

Plastics chemical takes another hit: for the first time, study links bisphenol A to heart disease.(Body & Brain)(Clinical report)
October 11, 2008... A new study has linked the plastics chemical bisphenol A to heart disease. Based on a sample of 1,455 U.S. adults, the study also adds to evidence linking BPA to liver enzyme problems and type 2 diabetes. While the liver and diabetes links...

Lipid serves as healthy hormone: mice benefit from fatty acid.(Body & Brain)
October 11, 2008... Some fats are just better than others. Omega-3 fatty acids, including fats that make up fish oil, have been recognized for their health-promoting benefits. Well, move over, omega-3s; now there's a fat that's even phatter. Researchers at...

Highly wired.(Brief article)(Clinical report)
October 11, 2008... Men are dense--in the temporal neocortex anyway. An investigation of brain tissue recovered from epilepsy patients during surgery showed men had a higher density of brain cell connectors, called synapses, than their female counterparts. The...

Location, location, location.(Brief article)(Clinical report)
October 11, 2008... Talk about a mixed blessing. Two new studies in the Sept. 3.7 Journal of Neuroscience show that immune cells known as macrophages can do an injured neuron good or can impart further harm, depending where on the neuron's brain-to-organ path the...

Low-cal bones.(Brief article)(Clinical report)
October 11, 2008... Cutting way back on calorie intake for a short time doesn't take a bite out of bones in volunteers who haven't yet reached middle age, a new study shows. The finding, reported in the Sept. 22 Archives of Internal Medicine, thickens the debate...

Let's get vertical: city buildings offer opportunities for farms to grow up instead of out.
October 11, 2008... Locally grown food is often touted as a perk of rural living. But if Dickson Despommier has anything to say about it, city dwellers will soon have the same environmental bragging rights. Despommier wants cities to grow their own food. Not...

The Science vote: on the surface, the presidential contenders appear to take similar stances and technology. But probe a bit, and differences emerge. Because Senators Barack Obama and John McCain have never formally debated S&T issues, and don't intend to, Science News runs down what these candidates and their campaigns have been saying.
October 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Political Climate Linking energy to greenhouse risks Science and technology have not played out as major presidential campaign issues this year. And following Sen. John McCain's unexpected announcement...

Dead--but not duds: white dwarfs shed light on physics and the fate of the cosmos.(Report)
October 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Amid the liveliest stars in the cosmos lie stellar corpses. Of these dead stars, the most abundant are white dwarfs--stars that in their prime were similar to the sun. These dense corpses foreshadow what will become...

Only in the north.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
October 11, 2008... It is not clear in the fine article on volcanoes ("Disaster goes global," SN: 8/30/08, p. 16) how dust from the eruption of Huaynaputina, well south of the equator, in 1600 could affect only the Northern Hemisphere. David Bronson,...

Not so small.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
October 11, 2008... Contrary to the title and the first sentence of the article, hydrogen is not "the smallest atom of them all" ("Spotting the smallest atoms," SN: 8/16/08, p. 7). Atoms with more numerous electrons display decreasing radii. As there is one proton...

Just checking.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
October 11, 2008... In regards to the phone conversation between Alice and Bob during which they compare the keys they have received from Charlie ("Welcome to the quantum Internet," SN: 8/16/08, p. 24): If the keys do not agree, Alice and Bob conclude that someone...

The migrating eye.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
October 11, 2008... Regarding "The wandering fish eye" (SN: 8/2/08, p. 11): As I understand Darwinian theory, it basically says that a random change in an organism, if it confers a survival advantage, will tend to be passed on to that individual's offspring, thus...

Correction.(FEEDBACK)(Correction notice)
October 11, 2008... Correction: An article in the August 30 issue ("Team toys with ions to simulate quantum world," SN: 8/30/08, p. 5) incorrectly says that the number of spin states of a 100 particle system, 2100, is greater than the number of protons in the...

A History of Paleontology Illustration.(BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 11, 2008... A History of Paleontology Illustration Jane P. Davidson [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The first artist to depict a fossil didn't even realize he was doing so: The "tongue stones," actually fossilized shark teeth, were natural curiosities...

Physics for future presidents: The Science Behind The Headlines.(BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 11, 2008... Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines Richard A. Muller [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The next president of the United States won't have a physics Ph.D.--but he will develop policy on physics-related matters. ...

'National greatness' versus real national greatness.(COMMENT)(Large Hadron Collider)(Viewpoint essay)
October 11, 2008... In 1993, the U.S. Congress cut off funds for the Superconducting Super Collider, or SSC. After years of planning, two years of major construction and $2 billion spent, the most enduring achievement of the stillborn project was a tunnel from...

Aim for 20/20 foresight, then adjust as necessary.(FROM THE EDITOR)
October 25, 2008... "When the facts change," the economist John Maynard Keynes once remarked, "I change my mind. What do you do?" Science is supposed to work like that, too. As new evidence comes in, old ideas should be abandoned, or modified, or refined....

Scientific observations.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... "There is always an applied side to thinking deeply. In any society there are many complicated issues that unfortunately get simplified to the point where short-sightedness wins.... Science teaches us to think more broadly than that. If we...

Science past: October 25, 1958.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... PIONEER LACKED EXTRA PUSH--Pioneer, man's first space probe, came within a fraction of the 35,250-foot-per-second velocity needed to put it into an orbit around the moon. It reached a maximum velocity of 34,400 feet per second. Even though the...

Science future.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Brief article)(Calendar)
October 25, 2008... November 15 The Museum of Science in Boston will unveil a skeleton of Triceratops horridus as Dart of its Colossal Fossils: Triceratops Cliff exhibit. Visit www.mos.org December 7-12 The 4th IEEE International Conference on...

Atom & Cosmos.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... A malfunction in the Hubble Space Telescope delayed until next year a mission to repair and upgrade the orbiting observatory. Read about it in "Hubble suddenly silent."

Humans.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(Neandertal behavior )(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The words "Neandertal" and "advanced" are rarely spoken together, but new findings from caves in Gibraltar suggest Neandertal behavior was relatively advanced. See "Stone Age seafood fans."

Science & society.(SN Online: www.sciencenews.org)(William Howard Taft and William Jennings Bryan)(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... During the 1908 presidential race, William Howard Taft and William Jennings Bryan sounded off in a new way as use of the phonograph got serious. Read "The first sound bites," which also offers historical images and early phonograph recordings.

Science stats.(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Statistical table)(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... CHILING THE CHILDREN Percent of kids in the United States who received drugs for emotional or behavioral difficulties, 2005-06 Medication for symptoms ADHD Other Gender Male 6.6 Female ...

The (-est).(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(GRB 080913)(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When a star exploded 12.8 billion light-years away, it set the record for farthest-ever known gamma-ray burst. NASA's Swift satellite detected the blast, named GRB 080913, on September 13. Seeing the blast is like...

Cooling climate 'consensus' of 1970s never was: myth often cited by global warming skeptics debunked.(STORY ONE)
October 25, 2008... The reasons to disbelieve that humans are causing global warming are many and varied, skeptics say. For example: Natural factors such as long-term variations in solar radiation are causing the rise in worldwide average temperature. The urban...

Back story: ups and downs in global temperature.(IN THE NEWS)(Chronology)
October 25, 2008... 1870s Efforts to collect global temperature records begin 1938 First analysis to show long-term warming trend 1960s First recognition that Eart, on average, had been cooling for two-plus decades 1978 The balance...

New gene delivery method takes major step toward safer stem cells: reprogramming works without DNA-altering viruses in mice.(Genes & Cells)
October 25, 2008... Get rid of DNA-altering viruses--check. In a step toward medical treatments based on embryonic-like stem cells, researchers have found a safer way to revert adult mouse cells to an embryonic state. The new technique, reported online...

X chromosome is extra diverse: men with multiple mates cause more genetic variety.(Genes & Cells)(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... Men who have children with multiple women spread genetic diversity along with their wild oats, a new study shows. [GRAPHIC OMITTED] DNA analysis of nonfunctional regions on the X chromosome and on the non-sex chromosomes in six groups...

Manipulating diamond's impurities may lead to finer-scale microscopes: nitrogen atoms could be used as magnetic field detectors.(Matter & Energy)
October 25, 2008... The nearly occult arts of quantum computing research could soon help biologists. Two teams of researchers, from the United States and Germany, have found a way to make diamond nanocrystals into microscopes that could see at the resolution...

Thinning fuel before injection boosts efficiency: new device could improve gas mileage in cars, trucks.(Matter & Energy)(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... A little voltage can jolt existing cars to get better gas mileage, new research shows. Applying a strong electric field to fuel a moment before it was injected into the engine's cylinders boosted fuel efficiency of a Mercedes-Benz 300D...

2008 Nobel Prize winners in the sciences announced: committee recognizes work with viruses, symmetry breaking and a fluorescent protein.(Science & Society)
October 25, 2008... Physiology or Medicine [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] The $1.4 million Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2008 will be shared by three European scientists for identifying the roles of sexually transmitted viruses in causing cervical...

Galaxy clusters slide to the south: mysterious flow could call universe's uniformity into question.(Atom & Cosmos)
October 25, 2008... Clusters of galaxies are flowing through space, seemingly under the influence of a mysterious attractive force outside the visible universe, a new study suggests. Researchers detected what they have dubbed "dark flow" while surveying 700...

More clues to Martian chemistry: Phoenix Lander data reveal mineral interactions with water.(Atom & Cosmos)(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has found new evidence that liquid water once interacted with minerals in the Red Planet's arctic region, scientists reported September 29 at a news briefing. Two Phoenix experiments...

Get the lowdown on the solar wind: long decline in sun's activity drops barrier to cosmic rays.(Atom & Cosmos)(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... Every 11 years, the sun gets the doldrums. Solar storms are fewer and the strength of the solar wind, the stream of charged particles blown from the sun, declines. New spacecraft observations report the true lowdown: The current solar minimum...

Cichlids divide along color lines: sensory changes may be splitting a fish species in two.(Life)
October 25, 2008... Some cichlid fish see red better while others only have eyes for blue. This difference in vision, observed in fish in an African lake, could be pushing red-tinged cichlids to branch off from their blue-tinged brethren and to form a new species....

Forget bird-brained.(Life)(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Paleontologists have discovered a new species of carnivorous dinosaur that breathed like a bird. Unlike mammals, birds have a system of breathing in which multiple bellows, or air sacs, in the rib cage push...

Bluefins mingle across the ocean: findings could complicate fish management plans.(Life)
October 25, 2008... Bluefin tuna get around. The highly prized fish traverse the Atlantic with a disregard for international boundaries that has set nations quarrelling over who gets to fish and who sets the limits. Now new research on the whereabouts of Atlantic...

Curtain drops after ants' final act: securing the nest means death for some Brazilian ants.(Life)(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... A Brazilian ant colony leaves some members out in the cold each night--literally. Tasked with closing the nest door from the outside, these ants complete their final mission and wander off, never to be seen again, researchers report in the...

Window of opportunity for stroke treatment widens to 4 1/2 hours: finding could benefit patients, clarify treatment procedures.(Body & Brain)
October 25, 2008... Emergency room physicians can deliver clot-busting treatments to a wider range of stroke patients than previously thought, European researchers report in the Sept. 25 New England Journal of Medicine. The finding could help ER doctors prevent...

Patterns differ in aging brains: gene activity in men changes earlier than it does in women.(Body & Brain)(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... Men's and women's brains age differently, a new study demonstrates. Researchers led by Carl Cotman and Nicole Berchtold of the University of California, Irvine find that the activity of genes in men's brains begins to change earlier than...

Diet details may influence longevity: cutting protein may be as important as cutting calories.(Body & Brain)
October 25, 2008... Beefing about your diet probably won't lengthen your life, but a new study suggests that cutting down on beef and other protein-laden foods might. A group of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, led by Luigi Fontana and John...

Anthrax vaccine makeover.(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... Less may be better for the much-maligned anthrax vaccine, a new study in the Oct. 1 Journal of the American Medical Association suggests. People getting a slightly different kind of injection had less pain but no diminished protection against...

Genetic link to dyslexia.(Brief article)
October 25, 2008... Unlike speaking, reading is a thoroughly unnatural act. But that doesn't mean biology has no role in literacy. A gene involved in early brain development influences a range of reading problems, including dyslexia, a new study published online...

Ultra massive: as big as it gets: a black hole can consume anything in its path. These monsters can become huge--but perhaps only so huge.
October 25, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If asked to name stupendously amazing things in space, most people would probably pick black holes. These evil-tinged clowns of the universe are definite wows. Insatiable is their middle name. Grand and merciless,...

Body in mind: long thought the province of the abstract, cognition may actually evolve as physical experiences and actions ignite mental life.
October 25, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With gargantuan ears, gleaming brown eyes, a fuzzy white muzzle and a squat, furry body, Leonardo looks like a magical creature from a Harry Potter book. He's actually a robot powered by an innovative set of silicon...

The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics.(BOOKSHELF)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 25, 2008... The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics Leonard Susskind [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For a good view into the real world of physics--not the sanitized version of textbooks and...

Defining death.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
October 25, 2008... Allowing doctors to absolutely define death ("Doctors debate death definition for transplants," SN: 9/13/08, p. 5) as "irreversible brain damage" is a slippery slope. There is a lot of pressure from transplant coordinators for body parts. While...

Reality bytes.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
October 25, 2008... The introduction to Alex Szalay's commentary ("Preserving digital data for the future of eScience," SN: 8/30/08, p. 32) says "... files that will soon approach the petabyte ([10.sup.15]--of quadrillion--byte) scale." But bytes are not...

Population pressure.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
October 25, 2008... Regarding "Science should be prominent in U.S. foreign policy" (SN: 8/2/08, p. 32): Science and technology have bettered the lives of millions, and the future remains bright as long as human imagination thrives. A troubling trend, though, is...

Chemical on Mars.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
October 25, 2008... In the article titled "Mars lander confirms water ice" (SN: 8/30/08, p. 11), the author says the chemical compound perchlorate was found. Does this compound occur in a state of nature or is it only synthetic, made by man? If it is not natural,...

A triathlon of sorts.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
October 25, 2008... I very much enjoyed Susan Milius' feature article on animal athletes ("Built for speed," SN: 8/16/08, p. 14). Before relegating humans to the root cellar of couch potatoes, however, name an animal capable of besting a human (and not just an...

Correction.(FEEDBACK)(Correction notice)
October 25, 2008... Correction: An article in the Aug. 30 issue ("Invisibility is almost within sight," SN: 8/30/08, p. 15) incorrectly said that when light bends at the surface of a pond it can make fish look larger and closer. The article should have said only...

U.S. must invest in technologies to avoid energy crisis.(COMMENT)
October 25, 2008... Steven Chu, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Nobel laureate in physics, has advocated for energy thrift. During a September visit to Washington, D.C., he spoke with senior editor Janet Raloff about how he believes the...