Science News articles from September 2003

Science News archives from September 2003

Anthrax vaccine gets makeover.(Double Shot)
September 6, 2003... Anthrax, a scourge once confined to farmers and wool handlers, has become a member of the rogues' gallery of biological weapons. Although there's a vaccine against anthrax, it's been the target of such strong criticism that a government-funded...

Dating ancient paintings in the caves of Borneo.(Art on the Rocks)
September 6, 2003... The matchstick figures and images of hands lining the Gua Saleh Cave in southeast Borneo were made at least 9,900 years ago, a team of French archaeologists has determined. That date suggests that people inhabited the Asian island, the third...

Cozying up to Mars.(This Week)(Brief Article)
September 6, 2003... The Hubble Space Telescope took this color-composite portrait of Mars on Aug. 26, just 11 hours before the Red Planet passed within 56 million kilometers of Earth, its closest approach in 59,619 years. The image, which shows Mars' south polar...

What's the source of quick-return comets?(Hubble Highlights a Riddle)
September 6, 2003... New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope are demonstrating that scientists don't know where a major class of comets comes from. Until recently, most planetary scientists had assumed that comets that take less than 20 years to orbit...

Poison frogs upgrade toxins from prey.(Skin Chemistry)
September 6, 2003... For the first time, scientists have found a poisonous frog that takes up a toxin from its prey and then tweaks the chemical to make it a more deadly weapon. At least three species of the 4-to-5-centimeter-long Dendrobates frogs of the New...

Erratic HIV therapy hasn't fueled resistance.(Zealous Adherence)
September 6, 2003... Among people infected with HIV, those who don't consistently take their antiretroviral drugs as prescribed are no more likely to develop drug-resistant HIV than are patients who adhere to their treatment schedule, researchers report. This...

Hybrid material removes mercury from water.(Sopping Up Heavy Metal)
September 6, 2003... Endowed with resourceful molecular machinery, microbes can adapt to environments as unappealing as oil slicks and toxic-waste dumps. Some bacteria can even bind to heavy metals such as mercury--a trick that researchers at the University of...

Baja skulls shake up American ancestry.(Continental Survivors)
September 6, 2003... Around 600 years ago, the Pericu people roamed the southern tip of what is now Mexico's Baja peninsula, a finger of land that extends below California. Although the Spanish conquest spelled their demise in the 16th century, the Pericu were...

Buyer beware: some psychologists see danger in excessive materialism.
September 6, 2003... California psychologist Allen Kanner often asks the children he treats for emotional and behavioral problems to talk about what they want to be when they grow up. Until about 10 years ago, kids told Kanner they wanted jobs such as astronaut,...

Getting the GOODS on galaxies: a telescope views patches of the universe in a rainbow of colors.
September 6, 2003... Over the past decade, the Hubble Space Telescope has literally changed our view of the universe. Much of what we now understand about galaxy formation has been gleaned from Hubble staring for 10 days at a single tiny patch of sky. Within this...

A phoenix on Mars.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
September 6, 2003... If all goes well, in 2008, a spacecraft will land on the north polar region of Mars and scoop up samples of the icy terrain. Analyzing those samples on the spot, the $325-million probe that NASA approved early last month will look for minerals...

Flag raised for kids' mental health.(Behavior)(Brief Article)
September 6, 2003... No nationwide study of psychiatric disorders has been conducted among children and teenagers in the United States. However, a 7-year study of kids living in North Carolina indicates that at any given time 1 in 6 children had a psychiatric...

Smart dust can swarm target.(Technology)(Brief Article)
September 6, 2003... Scientists have fabricated micrometer-size silicon mirrors, or "smart dust," that can swarm and stick to a target--conceivably, contaminants in drinking water or a cancer cell--and then relay information about that target to the outside world....

Amino acid lends a heavy hand.(Chemistry)(Brief Article)
September 6, 2003... Billions of years ago, a simple amino acid may have triggered all other amino acids to adopt a left-handed configuration, determining the chemical fate of these biological building blocks and influencing the emergence of life on Earth. ...

Lights out.(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
September 6, 2003... Prophets of gloom might be right. The universe is gradually growing darker. That's the conclusion of astronomers who have conducted a detailed analysis of the colors of some 37,000 nearby galaxies. A galaxy's spectrum is a good indicator of...

Babies show eye for object lessons.(Behavior)(Brief Article)
September 6, 2003... Between 4 months and 6 months of age, babies parlay their visual experience into the insight that objects exist as permanent entities, even when hidden from view, a new study finds. The results challenge the influential notion that such...

Indonesian reefs fell prey to fires.(Earth Science)(Brief Article)
September 6, 2003... The fires that swept through Indonesian rain forests late in 1997 apparently laid waste to some marine ecosystems in the area, as well. Before 1997, more than 100 species of hard corals made up the reefs surrounding the Mentawai Islands, an...

Catalyzing green chemistry.(Chemistry)(Brief Article)
September 6, 2003... With a new, recyclable catalyst, chemical firms could cut down on the amount of waste generated in the manufacturing of products, according to researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. Industrial processes used for...

The Best American Science Writing 2003.(Book Review)
September 6, 2003... OLIVER SACKS AND JESSE COHEN, EDS. This compendium of previously published articles spanning all fields of science is the fourth in a series. Authors from publications such as Harper's Magazine, the New Yorker, Discover, Science News, and...

Human Wildlife: the Life That Lives on Us.(Book Review)
September 6, 2003... ROBERT BUCKMAN Roughly 90 percent of the cells that a human body carries aren't human. They belong to the bacteria fungi, viruses, and parasites that live on or in us. Most coexist with us and are beneficial in fending off disease or...

Measure For Measure: the Story of Imperial, Metric and Other Units.(Book Review)
September 6, 2003... ALEX HEBRA Believe it or not, the United States is officially a metric nation. In 1893, the secretary of the treasury declared it so But the idea never caught on here, and we have clung to the pound, gallon, and mile. Those imperial units...

Signor Marconi's Magic Box: the Most Remarkable Invention of the 19th Century and the Amateur Inventor Whose Genius Sparked a Revolution.(Book Review)
September 6, 2003... GAVIN WEIGHTMAN Those who witnessed the first public demonstrations of Signor Guglielmo Marconi's magic box in 1896 thought they were being duped. After all, Marconi himself couldn't definitively explain how he was able to transmit...

The Shadow Club: The Greatest Mystery in the Universe--Shadows--and the Thinkers Who Unlocked Their Secrets.(Book Review)
September 6, 2003... ROBERTO CASATI While watching a lunar eclipse years ago, Casati had an epiphany: Shadows don't hide; they reveal. For the next few years, he set about discovering how ancient and modern philosophers, astronomers, and artists manipulated...

Stress aplenty.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 6, 2003... Family members who perform the caregiver function usually pay a price because of the stresses involved ("Till IL-6 Do Us Part: Elderly caregivers show harmful immune effect," SN: 7/5/03, p. 5). If "chronic adversity" is theorized to be the...

Utter shame.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 6, 2003... Regarding the article on udder tampering in livestock competitions ("Udder Beauty" SN: 7/12/03, p. 24), it's sad that the push for easy success is so pervasive. Although colleges and universities receiving federal research funds must require...

What's the problem here?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 6, 2003... Since most pleural abnormalities don't actually interfere with lung function," the statement that dangerous asbestos exposures extended beyond the workplace in Libby, Mont., must be considered an opinion or assumption, not something confirmed...

Correction.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 6, 2003... The description of the book The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy (SN: 7/12/03, p. 31)put Earth too close to the Milky Way's center. The theorized black hole there would be about 28,000 light-years from Earth, not 28 light-years.

Sounding out a new role for black holes.(A Low Note in Cosmos)
September 13, 2003... It's a tone no one can hear, generated by a body no one can see, yet its reverberations may be huge. Astronomers reported this week that they have for the first time detected sound waves generated by a black hole. The finding appears to...

Promising path to heavy nuclei.(Fusion Boost)
September 13, 2003... Making heavy, artificial atomic nuclei has long been part of the program for answering fundamental questions about matter and the universe, but it hasn't been easy. Physicists are looking toward techniques that forge hefty nuclei by fusing...

Enzyme may reveal cancer susceptibility.(Damage Patrol)
September 13, 2003... Breaks in a person's DNA underlie the cancer-causing effects of cigarette smoke. Such DNA damage can lead to mutations that bring about the aberrant cell growth of cancer. But since not all smokers get lung cancer, scientists have assumed that...

Genetic defects link psychiatric ailments.(DNA Tie for Two Disorders)
September 13, 2003... Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder may share more than a propensity for wreaking havoc on mental life. These severe psychiatric disorders, each of which occurs in about 1 in 100 adults, rest on identical flaws in a set of genes that produce a...

Comfort food calms, with weighty effect.(Sweet Relief)
September 13, 2003... The sweet and fatty foods that people often turn to in times of stress might in fact relieve anxiety. That's the good news in an innovative biological theory of people's responses to stress. The bad news is that for those with chronic stress,...

Cancer-vaccine study is retracted.(Paper Chased)(Brief Article)
September 13, 2003... A promising cancer treatment has been dealt a setback, as the authors of a key paper have reluctantly retracted their report. Three years ago, Alexander Kugler of the University of Gottingen in Germany and his colleagues described limited...

Major floods may be waning in Europe.(River Stats Trickle In)
September 13, 2003... In August 2002, parts of central Europe experienced unprecedented flooding after record rains fell upon saturated soils and brimming reservoirs. Damages on the continent added up to more than 25 billion Euros, and in Dresden, Germany, the Elbe...

Danger in the air: volcanoes have a long reach.
September 13, 2003... On Dec. 15,1989, KLM flight 867 from Amsterdam was approaching its destination in Anchorage, Alaska, when the plane flew into what appeared to be a thin layer of normal clouds. Suddenly, according to flight-crew reports, it got very dark...

Memory enhancers: researchers explore future possibilities for dense data storage.
September 13, 2003... Through engineers' never-ending quest for miniaturization, computers and other electronics keep getting smaller. But for many components, the rules change when their size approaches the nanoscale--where parts are just billionths of a meter...

Exposure to phthalate may shorten pregnancy.(Environment)(Brief Article)
September 13, 2003... Babies exposed to a common plasticizer before birth spend a week less in the womb than do those without evidence of exposure, researchers have found. In their study, pediatrician Giuseppe Latini of Perrino Hospital in Brindisi, Italy, and...

Secret of strong silk.(Chemistry)(Brief Article)
September 13, 2003... How spiders and silkworms manage to produce strong fibers without clogging their silk-producing glands has puzzled scientists for years. While trying to mimic the process in the lab, researchers at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., stumbled...

Fossils' ear design hints at aquatic lifestyle.(Paleobiology)(Brief Article)
September 13, 2003... One of Earth's earliest-known four-limbed creatures--long thought to have been a land dweller at least part of the time--could hear best when it was underwater, according to new studies of fossilized skulls. Remains of Ichthyostega, a...

Grades slipping? Check for snoring.(Biomedicine)(Brief Article)
September 13, 2003... Children who snore frequently are more likely to struggle with their schoolwork than are children who rarely snore, researchers in Germany report in the August American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The scientists...

Solar system replica?(Astronomy)(Brief Article)
September 13, 2003... Looking at a star 90 light-years away, astronomers have found what may be the closest analog known to our solar system. By recording the motion of the sunlike star HD 70642 for 5 years, scientists have discerned that an unseen planet at least...

New mantle model gets the water out.(Earth Science)(Brief Article)
September 13, 2003... Between our planet's crust and its core lies the mantle, a realm where solid rock oozes under pressures millions of times as great as that exerted by the atmosphere. Although some scientists hold that the entire mantle gradually mixes, others...

Coronary calcium may predict death risk.(Biomecine)(Brief Article)
September 13, 2003... A computerized X-ray image of calcium deposits along a person's coronary arteries can signal whether that individual carries a hidden health risk, a study in the September Radiology suggests. Researchers enrolled 10,377 people, average age...

Control of animal epidemic slowed human illness.(Infectious Diseases)(Brief Article)
September 13, 2003... Control measures implemented in response to a 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease among livestock in England and Scotland apparently helped reduce by a third the incidence that year of a parasitic illness in people, researchers in Scotland...

Butterflies of North America.(Book Review)
September 13, 2003... JIM P. BROCK AND KENN KAUFMAN Hundreds of species of butterflies flutter around North America without much notice, in a stirring introduction, Kaufman challenges readers to start looking for them. In the rest of the book, he and...

Intelligent Memory: Improve the Memory that Makes You Smarter.(Book Review)
September 13, 2003... BARRY GORDON AND LISA BERGER Gordon, the founder of the Memory Clinic at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, teams with science writer Berger to impart an understanding of how memory works and how it may be improved. The authors focus on...

Lowly Origin: Where, When and Why Our Ancestors First Stood Up.(Book Review)
September 13, 2003... JONATHAN KINGDON Bipadelism makes us. distinctly human, It enables us to cross wide-open spaces, manipulate complex tools, and light fires, Kingdon melds evidence from the fossil record with a survey of fields including ecology,...

The Moon: Myth an Image.(Book Review)
September 13, 2003... JULES CASHFORD Telling stories about the moon began as an ancient activity. Lunar images appear in the earliest rock carvings, and they still fascinate us. Cashford explores the myths, symbols, and poetic musings inspired by the moon, from...

Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.(Book Review)
September 13, 2003... LESTER R. BROWN Environmental analyst and founder of the Earth Policy Institute, Brown sounds the alarm about a food supply that's shrinking because of overharvesting and water shortages. Brown reports that China's grain harvests have...

Twin Tracks: the Unexpected Origins of the Modern World.(Book Review)
September 13, 2003... JAMES BURKE Right now, someone unknown to you is doing something that will bring change to your life. You will do the same to others. This isn't fortune cookie philosophy. It's a systems approach to understanding history. Burke, a...

Take flight.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 13, 2003... With the facts as given in "Flight bums less fuel than stopovers," (SN: 7/12/03, p. 29), the birds spent about 7 percent of their time flying and 93 percent not flying. At the energy rates given, I get that 25 percent of the energy used was...

Near and far.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 13, 2003... Although I was thrilled, as usual, to hear of yet another discovery that might lead us to our brethren in the universe ("Record Breaker: A planet from the early universe," SN: 7/12/03, p. 19), I was dismayed to learn that our scientists have...

Questions, questions.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 13, 2003... "All the World's a Phage" (SN: 7/12/03, p. 26) raised so many questions. Do children who play in the dirt get their increased immune resistance from phages in the dirt? Is there a phage connection in the AIDS story? Does the risk of dying of...

Extinct rodent was big, really big.(Ratzilla)
September 20, 2003... Think the rodents you've seen in movies are scary? Scientists who've analyzed the fossilized remains of an extinct South American relative of guinea pigs say that the ancient bruisers were as large as bison. Researchers first described...

Spinal fluid may signal Alzheimer's presence.(Early Warning?)
September 20, 2003... Although it's the most common type of dementia, Alzheimer's disease is notoriously difficult to diagnose. When confronted with a confused and forgetful patient, a doctor must first rule out other brain disorders by putting the patient through a...

Legume proteins provide motion.(Dream Machines from Beans)
September 20, 2003... Cells, tiny as they are, are packed with molecular machinery that investigators can exploit for their own purposes. German scientists now report that certain protein complexes in fava beans have characteristics that might make the complexes...

Mollusk gene rewrites history of sex hormone.(Estrogen Shock)
September 20, 2003... Evolutionary biologists have found that the California sea hare, a mollusk that goes by the scientific name of Aplysia californica, has a protein similar to proteins in people that respond to estrogen and other steroid hormones. The surprising...

Monkeys demand equitable exchanges.(Unfair Trade)
September 20, 2003... For the first time, researchers say, they have shown that a species other than Homo sapiens has a sense of fairness. Female brown capuchin monkeys tend to turn uncooperative, and sometimes even throw things, if they see a neighbor receiving...

Trapped atom shoots steady light beam.(One-Atom Laser)
September 20, 2003... Talk about miniaturization! California researchers have coaxed laser light from a single cesium atom. "We've pushed [the laser] to its conceptual limit," says Jason McKeever of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He and his...

Carbon-nanotube device stores data in molecules.(Molecular Memory)
September 20, 2003... If all goes according to some researchers' plans, organic molecules will replace silicon as the workhorses in electronic devices. Edging toward that goal, chemists at the University of California, Los Angeles have fabricated a memory device in...

To your health? Controversy surrounds whole-body scans--a costly screen for silent threats.
September 20, 2003... You've probably heard a radio ad or driven past a billboard hawking the service. The pitch usually goes something like this: "Sure, you look and feel healthy. But each year, countless people succumb to the silent killers: cancer and heart...

The body electric: a natural voltage within a growing embryo may teach it left from right.
September 20, 2003... As anyone who has ever recited the Pledge of Allegiance will attest, having your heart in the right place means having it on your left side. Despite the outward symmetry of the human body, left-right differences abound beneath everyone's skin....

Widows show third-year rebound.(Behavior)(Brief Article)
September 20, 2003... A widow typically struggles with grief immediately after her husband dies. By 3 years after the loss, however, these women have largely overcome grief-related problems, such as depression, social isolation, bodily pains, and poor eating habits,...

Particle decays hint at new matter.(Physics)(Brief Article)
September 20, 2003... Unexpected observations at a Japanese particle accelerator may signal the presence of previously unknown subatomic matter. The conjecture, from the so-called Belle team at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Tsukuba,...

Risk of egg diseases may rush incubation.(Zoology)(Brief Article)
September 20, 2003... Bird eggs can catch infections through their shells, and new tests in the wild suggest that this risk may be one of the pressures driving avian parents to start incubating eggs with a timing that puzzles biologists. Birds lay an egg a day...

Channeling light in the deep sea.(Technology)(Brief Article)
September 20, 2003... A genus of sea sponges grows its own light-conducting fibers that are remarkably similar to commercial-grade optical fibers--and in some ways better. A team of U.S. and Israeli researchers that recently studied several Euplectella species says...

Children's Science Dictionary.(Book Review)
September 20, 2003... STEVEN R. KLEINEDLER, ED. This vividly illustrated dictionary presents scientific concepts in a straightforward manner. More than 2,600 entries cover all areas of science. Snapshot biographies of famous scientists capture the essence of...

The Info Mesa: Science, Business, and New Age Alchemy on the Santa Fe Plateau.(Book Review)
September 20, 2003... ED REGIS While scientists and venture capitalists in California's Silicon Valley have seen their riches rise and fall in the past few years, a group of maverick scientists residing in Santa Fe, N.M., has sustained success. Regis profiles...

Mapping the Sky: the Essential Guide to Astronomy.(Book Review)
September 20, 2003... LEILA HADDAD AND ALAIN CIROU This guide is both a visually engaging and a clearly written introduction to reading the night sky with the naked eye, a telescope, or binoculars. A broad historical account of how the universe has been...

The Miraculous Fever-Tree: Malaria and the Quest for a Cure That Changed the World.(Book Review)
September 20, 2003... FIAMMETTA ROCCO Growing up in Africa, Rocco was touched directly by malaria. She had it; her father suffers regular bouts; and her grandfather died from it. Because of this, the story of quinine resonates deeply for her and makes this a...

Plant Propagation A to Z: Growing Plants for Free.(Book Review)
September 20, 2003... GEOFF BRYANT If you've ever considered growing plants from cuttings or wondered about the ideal conditions for germinating seeds, then this book is for you. Bryant clearly outlines all aspects of plant propagation, from selecting the right...

Quantum: a Guide for the Perplexed.(Book Review)
September 20, 2003... JIM AL-KHALILI This highly visual tour is an enlightening journey through the basics of subatomic physics and its practical consequences. An introductory chapter charts the short history of quantum mechanics through the work of Max Planck...

Popping off.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 20, 2003... I suspect that none of the researchers whose work was described in "Where's Poppa? Absent dads linked to early sex by daughters" (SN: 7/19/03, p. 35) was ever a teenage girl with an absent (or distant) father. I think the simplest explanation...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
September 20, 2003... The oral diabetes drug Glucophage (metformin) works by increasing cells' insulin sensitivity, not by inducing the pancreas "to make more insulin," as stated in "Blood Sugar Fix" (SN: 8/16/03,p. 104).

Morphing ink may bring video to newspapers.(The Daily Flicks)
September 27, 2003... Imagine opening the newspaper and seeing a full-color, video clip of a battle or sports match. That's the sort of vision that drives developers of electronic paper. Even though a black-and-white version that can display static images remains TI...

Has whaling driven orcas to a diet of sea lions?(Killer Consequences)
September 27, 2003... From the 1970s to the 1990s, populations of sea otters and some pinnipeds, including Steller sea lions and fur seals, took a mysterious nosedive in the northern Pacific. A new study floats a surprising explanation: These creatures became choice...

A planetary plunge, by Jove.(Galileo's Demise)
September 27, 2003... The Galileo spacecraft ended an 8-year tour of Jupiter and its moons on Sept. 21, when it dove into the planet's atmosphere, as scientists had planned. Minutes after the craft disintegrated, Earth received Galileo's swan song, a radio signal...

Long-term immunity isn't always beneficial.(Faulty Memory)
September 27, 2003... Come down with a case of chicken pox and, after you recover, your body seems to wear an invisible suit of armor that protects you from getting the disease again. Catch a cold, on the other hand, and the protective armor seems to fall away...

Poodle DNA compared with that of mice, people.(Letting the Dog Genome Out)
September 27, 2003... Chihuahuas, Irish wolfhounds, pit bulls, beagles, greyhounds, and more. Man's best friend comes in a range of sizes, shapes, and temperaments unmatched by any other mammalian species. Biologists have now taken a step toward understanding that...

Imaging technique reveals hidden atoms.(A Soft Touch)(atomic force microscope)
September 27, 2003... One of today's celebrity scientific instruments, the atomic force microscope (AFM), is valued despite some quirks. Famous for rendering atoms visible, it can also be blind. That shortfall has been particularly glaring when it comes to...

Lake yields core of pre-Inca silver making.(Origins of Smelting)(Cerro Rico)
September 27, 2003... According to 16th-century Spanish accounts, an Incan ruler who reigned nearly 600 years ago discovered Cerro Rico, a major silver deposit in southern Bolivia's Andes Mountains. More recently, archaeological discoveries have documented the...

Reef fish cope with low oxygen.(Breathless)
September 27, 2003... Despite their seemingly idyllic surroundings, coral reef fish show unexpected toughness, according to a new analysis offish respiration. In the first tests of low-oxygen tolerance among reef fish, all 31 species captured off the coast of...

Leashing the rattlesnake: a behind-the-scenes look at experimental design.
September 27, 2003... Depending on how you look at them, snakes have no neck or nothing but neck, and either way, Ron Swaisgood had a problem. To finish his Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis he had to figure out how to put a rattlesnake on a leash....

After the tragedy: Columbia accident puts NASA in the hot seat.
September 27, 2003... "We get it." Those are the words that NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe recited over and over again at congressional hearings earlier this month, as if they were the can-do agency's new mantra. O'Keefe was responding to scathing criticism in the...