Science News articles from September 2005

Science News archives from September 2005

Chimps to people: apes show contrasts in genetic makeup.
September 3, 2005... Despite sharing much of their genetic identity with people, chimpanzees exhibit previously unappreciated DNA distinctions, according to the first rigorous comparisons of the two species' complete genetic sequences. The new research...

Olives alive: extra-virgin oil has anti-inflammatory properties.
September 3, 2005... Besides taste, scientists now offer another reason why people should drizzle their food with extra-virgin olive oil. A chemical analysis suggests that a molecule isolated from this grade of oil, which comes from the first pressing of the fruit,...

Recipe for a heavyweight: making a massive star.
September 3, 2005... Astronomers have a good idea of how small stars such as our sun form. First, a spinning gas cloud collapses to become a dense core surrounded by a flattened disk of gas and dust. Matter from the disk then falls onto the central body, which...

Fog be gone: nanocoating clarifies the view.
September 3, 2005... A new coating that prevents fogging and reflection could one day clear the world of misty mirrors, glaring glasses, and cloudy camera lenses. Researchers described their innovation, which relies on porous layers of nanoscale particles, at the...

Class acts from new pesticides: chemicals have little effect on mammals.
September 3, 2005... Insects, be warned. Research on three continents has turned up two new classes of selective pesticides that immobilize and eventually kill many insect species by interfering with a cell receptor unique to the insects. The novel chemicals could...

Wings warp for birdlike agility.(prototype aircraft)(Brief Article)
September 3, 2005... Taking cues from seagulls, a bird-size prototype aircraft morphs its wings to navigate cluttered environments. The ability to shift its wings between an M shape for cruising and landing and a W shape for dives and turns bodes well for tasks in...

A new role for statin drugs? Cholesterol fighters may reduce deaths soon after heart attacks.
September 3, 2005... People brought to a hospital in the throes of a heart attack are more likely to survive if they receive a statin drug, a new study finds. The report could pave the way for a trial to ascertain whether doctors should routinely use the...

Bumblebee 007: bees can spy on others' flower choices.
September 3, 2005... In a novel test of insect intel, researchers observed that bumblebees, which had spied on a worker bee from another colony feasting on unusual flowers, later tended to visit flowers of the same color. This talent amounts to social learning,...

Armor-plated puzzle: deciphering the code of viral geometry.
September 3, 2005... A few years after Francis H. Crick and James D. Watson unveiled the structure of DNA in 1953, they rocked the fledgling field of molecular biology again with a bold notion: Viruses are, in part, structured as crystals are. That idea captivated...

Food fix: neurobiology highlights similarities between obesity and drug addiction.(Cover Story)
September 3, 2005... It was 1990, and Neal, a 55-year-old salesman from Silver Spring, Md., was hitting rock bottom. For years, he had soothed the stress of his chaotic life with an evening bowl of vanilla ice cream. But in time, that just wasn't enough. Neal...

Rice, revealed.(Brief Article)
September 3, 2005... Researchers have finished a 6-year-long effort to sequence the genome of rice. The accomplishment makes the popular cereal the second plant ever to have its full genome sequenced. In 2003, scientists sequenced the genetics-research workhorse...

Hidden black holes.(Brief Article)
September 3, 2005... Astronomers have new evidence that a majority of the biggest black holes in the universe lie hidden behind thick veils of dust. Monster black holes, which reside at the centers of galaxies, betray their presence when their immense gravity...

Placebo reins in pain in brain.(Brief Article)
September 3, 2005... Pain relief provided by a substance with no active ingredients, called a placebo, may have neural as well as psychological origins. Men who reported relief from a painful jaw after receiving a placebo injection also showed signs of enhanced...

People with malaria attract more mosquitoes.
September 3, 2005... The malaria-causing protozoan Plasmodium falciparum may facilitate its own spread by making people more alluring to mosquitoes, according to biomedical researchers reporting in the September PLoS Biology. P.falciparum spends part of its...

Can polluted air cause birth defects?(Brief Article)
September 3, 2005... Scientists have found new evidence that prenatal exposure to air pollution may cause congenital heart defects. However, inconsistencies with past results make the finding less than definitive, the researchers say. Epidemiologist Pauline...

Chimps ape others to learn tool use.(Brief Article)
September 3, 2005... Much like people, chimpanzees are inveterate conformists whose copycat tendencies enable them to develop cultural traditions, a new study suggests. Andrew Whiten of the University of St. Andrews in Fife, England, and his colleagues trained...

Movies put smoking in a bad light.(Brief Article)
September 3, 2005... Smokers in U.S. movies are more likely to be villainous or poor than heroic or wealthy, according to a study in the August Chest. Karan Omidvari, a physician at St. Michael's Medical Center in Newark, N.J., and his colleagues recorded the...

Under Ground: How Creatures of Mud and Dirt Shape Our World.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 3, 2005... UNDER GROUND: How Creatures of Mud and Dirt Shape Our World YVONNE BASKIN People may give little thought to it, but the world beneath their feet teems with life. Baskin gives readers a closer look at soil and the diverse ecosystems...

Why Birds Sing: A Journey Into the Mystery of Bird Song.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 3, 2005... WHY BIRDS SING: A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song DAVID ROTHENBERG Philosopher and musician Rothenberg chooses not to answer the question suggested by his book's title but rather to raise additional questions about birdsongs that...

The Hopes of Snakes: And Other Tales from the Urban Landscape.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 3, 2005... THE HOPES OF SNAKES: And Other Tales from the Urban Landscape LISA COUTURIER This collection of essays follows Couturier through a lifetime of her communion with nature in, of all places, Manhattan and the suburbs of Washington D.C....

Firefly Encyclopedia of Trees.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 3, 2005... FIREFLY ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TREES STEVE CAFFERTY, ED. From beeches and redwoods to monkey puzzles and hackberries, this oversize encyclopedia provides a wealth of information on hundreds of species of trees. The book's first section...

Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 3, 2005... ROVING MARS: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet STEVE SQUYRES The landings of the twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity in January 2004 marked the culmination of many scientists' dreams and years of hard...

Pick of the crop.(Letter to the Editor)
September 3, 2005... "Honey, We Shrank the Snow Lotus: Picking big plants reduces species' height" (SN: 7/9/05, p. 20) suggests that the change is an evolutionary process. However, this and the other examples given are all more selective breeding than natural...

Why wait?(Letter to the Editor)
September 3, 2005... I was very glad to read of the research done by Stefano Pluchino with adult-mouse stem cells ("Brain Power: Stem cells put a check on nerve disorders," SN: 7/16/05, p. 36). I am, however, terribly disappointed with his comment that therapeutic...

Light reading.(Letter to the Editor)
September 3, 2005... "Bright Future: New materials and devices bring white LEDs closer to home" (SN: 7/16/05, p. 43) makes a comparison: "A LED can last for up to 100,000 hours compared with the 1,000-hour lifetime of a typical lightbulb and the 10,000-hour...

Critical for coating: protein directs nerve-sheath construction.(myelin sheaths, Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine, Gottingen, Germany)
September 10, 2005... Just as plastic coatings insulate electrical wires, myelin sheaths surround nerve fibers in the body. In addition to protecting the fibers, these fatty sheaths speed up the message-carrying impulses and keep extraneous signals from interfering...

Dead tired: weary doctors function as if intoxicated.(workload hampers orientation while driving)
September 10, 2005... After a month of long hours of challenging work, fatigued physicians show impairments in driving and other tasks requiring constant attention and quick reactions. The changes are comparable to those that the physicians display, when better...

Hurricane provisions.(This Week)
September 10, 2005... We at Science News extend our strong concern and deepest sympathy to those who are suffering through the ongoing ordeal caused by Hurricane Katrina. The U.S. Postal Service has asked magazine publishers to suspend subscription mailings to...

Thinking the hurt away: expectations hitch ride on pain's brain pathway.(This Week)
September 10, 2005... When it comes to pain control, a dose of positive thinking goes a long way, according to researchers who have found that many of the same brain areas that respond to severe pain also respond to mere expectations of pain. This commonality...

Top of the Martian hill.(Brief Article)
September 10, 2005... NASA's rover Spirit recorded this 240[degrees] Martian panorama late last month after the vehicle completed a 14-month climb up Husband Hill, named after Commander Rick Husband, who was killed in the Columbia shuttle accident. Located about 3...

Sun and sand: dirty silicon could supply solar power.
September 10, 2005... Scientists have proposed a way to control the distribution of contaminants in silicon, potentially opening up the use of cheaper, "dirtier" starting materials for making solar cells. In a study published in the September Nature Materials, the...

Electronics gets Y's: nanotubes branch out as novel transistors.
September 10, 2005... Y-shaped nanotubes might become a common component in ultrasmall electronic circuitry, according to scientists who have just shown that the microscopic, branched structures can function as transistors. The microelectronics industry has been...

Perfect match: tied contest gives fish no hormone rush.(Institute of Applied Psychology, Lisbon, Portugal)
September 10, 2005... A male fish produces a burst of hormones as he fights off an intruder. Now, researchers say that this surge isn't triggered simply by fighting. "Apparently, the fish need to know whether they are winning," says Rui Oliveira of the...

Deep impact: a spacecraft breaks open a comet's secrets.(Comet Tempel 1 )(Cover Story)
September 10, 2005... Moving serenely through space some 130 million kilometers from Earth, Comet Tempel 1 appears no different than it did before July 4, the day a NASA spacecraft called Deep Impact fired a 372-kilogram copper projectile into the comet's icy...

When flu flies the coop: a pandemic threatens.(avian influenza virus H5N1)
September 10, 2005... When a nasty strain of influenza first jumped from poultry to people in Hong Kong in 1997, government officials there ordered the slaughter and cremation of more than a million domestic birds. That action squelched the human outbreak, but the...

Protein fingered in rare psychosis.(PGC-l-alpha )(Brief Article)
September 10, 2005... Doctors have long known that fasting exacerbates porphyria, an inherited disease marked by psychotic episodes. They've also known that glucose infusions, which induce insulin secretion, can mitigate the attacks. Researchers report in the...

Body-fluid battery.(Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, Singapore)(Brief Article)
September 10, 2005... Kidnapped by armed terrorists, the diplomat surreptitiously licks a plastic card and slips it back into a pocket. Soaked by the captive's saliva, a battery on the card springs to life, powering a transmitter that beams out an SOS. A...

Satellites could detect quakes on Venus.(PLANETARY SCIENCE)(Brief Article)
September 10, 2005... Strong seismic activity on Venus could cause brief but detectable temperature increases high in that planet's atmosphere, new analyses suggest. Although Venus is almost the same size as Earth, its atmosphere is about 53 times as dense at...

Rooting out hidden HIV.(AIDS treatment)(Brief Article)
September 10, 2005... Drugs currently used to suppress HIV, the AIDS virus, work only on actively replicating viral particles in the blood. When viruses lie dormant in a cell, they can escape the drugs' dragnet. Researchers report in the Aug. 13 Lancet that a...

Cancer-fighting e-mails.(Environmental Protection Agency, National Weather Service)(Brief Article)
September 10, 2005... The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Weather Service have teamed up to offer a new, free service to fight the most preventable cause of skin cancer, overexposure to the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation. The service will notify...

Pennies in heaven?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
September 10, 2005... Why slam a copper impactor into Comet Tempel 1 ("A Grand Slam: In a winning move, NASA probe burrows into a comet" SN: 7/9/05, p. 22)? Wouldn't copper vapor contaminate the spray? Why not a high-temperature ceramic? P.M. DELAUBENFELS,...

Time for testing.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
September 10, 2005... The information in "Cancer Switch: Good gene is shut off in various malignancies" (SN: 7/16/05, p. 35) represents the first indication of a potential test for the onset of esophageal cancer (EC), the fastest-growing cancer in the United States....

Relatively straightforward.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
September 10, 2005... In "Realistic Time Machine? New design could forgo exotic ingredient" (SN: 7/16/05, p. 38), you refer to a standard concept of a person speeding "in a rocket traveling slightly less than the speed of light" and say that "motion at such enormous...

Correction.(LETTERS)(Correction Notice)
September 10, 2005... "From Famine, Schizophrenia: Starvation gives birch to personality disorder" (SN: 8/6/05, p. 84) was imprecise in its headline and text. Schizophrenia is not considered a personality disorder.

The Xeno Chronicles: Two Years on the Frontier of Medicine inside Harvard's Transplant Research Lab.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 10, 2005... THE XENO CHRONICLES: Two Years on the Frontier of Medicine inside Harvard's Transplant Research Lab G. WAYNE MILLER In 2003, surgeon David Sachs of Harvard Medical School plunged his scalpel into Goldie the pig and transplanted the animal's...

The Theory of Almost Everything: The Standard Model, the Unsung Triumph of Modern Physics.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 10, 2005... THE THEORY OF ALMOST EVERYTHING: The Standard Model, the Unsung Triumph of Modern Physics ROBERT OERTER In the world of physics, the sexiest topic is the high-stakes search for a theory to tie together all modern physical theories and...

Hunger: An Unnatural History.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 10, 2005... HUNGER: An unnatural History SHARMAN APT RUSSELL Whether it's urging someone to grab breakfast or doing its best to sabotage a weight-loss diet, hunger is a driving force not easily ignored. This book takes a look at how hunger affects the...

Dino Wars: Discover the Deadliest Dinosaurs, Bloodiest Battles, and Super Survival Strategies of the Prehistoric World.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 10, 2005... DINO WARS: Discover the Deadliest Dinosaurs, Bloodiest Battles, and Super Survival Strategies of the Prehistoric World JIMMY JOHNSON AND MICHAEL J. BENTON Pit a big, slow Moschops against a small, darting Lycaenops in a battle to the...

What's That Bird? Getting to Know the Birds around You, Coast to Coast.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 10, 2005... WHAT'S THAT BIRD? Getting to Know the Birds around You, Coast to Coast JOSEPH CHOINIERE AND CLAIRE MOWBRAY GOLDING This is a book meant to be read and used simultaneously by parents and their children. It covers basics such as bird anatomy,...

Farthest bang: a burst that goes the distance.(This Week)(National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Swift satellite records gamma-ray burst)
September 17, 2005... Seconds after NASA'S Swift satellite recorded a gamma-ray burst on Sept. 4, astronomers' cell phones buzzed, beepers went off, and an e-mail alert flashed on more than 1,000 computer screens. It was the 68th time that Swift had notified...

Greener nylon: one-pot recipe could eliminate industrial leftovers.(This Week)
September 17, 2005... Each year, polymer makers around the world produce roughly 4 billion kilograms of nylon-6, a type of nylon used to make items ranging from clothing to carpets to car parts. Now, researchers have devised a one-step process for making the primary...

Day-glo flowers: some bright blooms naturally fluoresce.(This Week)
September 17, 2005... Flowers such as four-o'clocks and portulacas invented the fluorescent look long before the psychedelic 1960s with its black light posters, new research shows. These species rank as the first flowers found to fluoresce naturally in people's...

Head-to-head comparison: coils top clips in brain-aneurysm treatment.(This Week)
September 17, 2005... Insertion of a tiny metal coil into a bleeding aneurysm in the brain appears safer in the long run for some patients than a more-established treatment that requires brain surgery, researchers find. A brain aueurysm--an abnormal bulge in a...

Noises on, language off: speech impairment linked to unsound perception.(This Week)
September 17, 2005... A common childhood language disorder stems from a brain-based difficulty in discerning the acoustic building blocks of spoken words, especially in noisy settings such as classrooms, a new study suggests. Researchers estimate that as many as...

Forever young: digging for the roots of stem cells.(This Week)
September 17, 2005... Researchers have now shown how a trio of proteins controls whether an embryonic stem cell takes an irreversible step toward developing into specific tissues or retains its raw potential to become a blood cell, bone cell, brain cell, or any...

Stepping lightly: new view of how human gaits conserve energy.(This Week)
September 17, 2005... For 200,000 or more years, the fine-tuned mechanics of human motion have enabled our species to traverse enormous distances on foot with remarkably little energy expenditure. Scientists have long pondered which specific qualities of walking and...

The wind and the fury: has climate change made hurricanes fiercer, or are such claims hot air?(Cover Story)
September 17, 2005... AS Hurricane Katrina steamed forward on Thursday, Aug. 25, residents of the southeastern U.S. shore breathed sighs of relief. The storm passed Miami as a weak hurricane, rating as only a category 1 storm on a scale from 1 to 5. But within days,...

Oral exams: saliva could provide an alternative for some diagnostic tests.
September 17, 2005... When I was a kid, my best friend Ben and I used to compete at great lengths to make each other laugh. One time, I made Ben laugh so hard that he actually spit, and some of his saliva landed on my arm. I thought that was gross and recoiled in...

Champion of strength is forged in mighty anvil.(PHYSICS)(Brief Article)
September 17, 2005... A newly created form of carbon has captured the crown of world's strongest known material. A team of researchers in Germany and France made the new material using a specialized, multijawed anvil that simultaneously squeezed and heated a powder...

The river's rising: a depressing effect.(EARTH SCIENCE)(Brief Article)
September 17, 2005... When the rivers in the Amazon basin flood their banks each rainy season, the added weight of the water causes land throughout the region to sink, scientists say. At Manaus, Brazil, the land rises and falls as much as 75 millimeters each...

Lead in spice mixes caused poisonings.(FOOD AND NUTRITION)(Brief Article)
September 17, 2005... Contaminated spices purchased from poorly regulated sources can explain some cases of lead poisoning that involve several members of a family, say Alan D. Woolf of Children's Hospital in Boston and Nicholas T. Woolf of Lexington (Mass.)...

French site sparks Neandertal debate.(ARCHAEOLOGY)(Brief Article)
September 17, 2005... Around 36,000 years ago, Neandertals and people lived side by side in southwestern France for at least a millennium, according to a newly assembled chronology of ancient occupations there. Paul Mellars of Cambridge University in England and his...

Meetings.
September 17, 2005... American Chemical Society Washington, D.C. August 28-September 1

Cactus too purifies water.(GREEN CHEMISTRY)
September 17, 2005... Many Mexican communities have drinking water laced with unsafe levels of arsenic and unappealing amounts of sand and other solids. To make the water cleaner, Norma Alcantar, a chemical engineer at the University of South Florida in Tampa and...

Novel reaction produces hydrogen.(FUEL)(Brief Article)
September 17, 2005... Hydrogen production remains a major stumbling block on the road to the hydrogen economy, a much-touted successor to the current oil-based economy. Today, hydrogen supplies are derived largely from fossil fuels, such as oil, via processes that...

How hot was it?(POLYMERS)(research on heat-sensing polymers)(Brief Article)
September 17, 2005... Scientists have created heat-sensing polymers that indicate exposure to high temperatures by changing color under ultraviolet (UV) light. If built into food and medicine packaging, such materials could serve as indicators of spoilage. At...

Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 17, 2005... BASIC INSTINCT: The Genesis of Behavior MARK S. BLUMBERG What does it mean to say that something is in our genes? How much of our behavior is guided by the instructions in our DNA and how much is imposed on us by our environment?...

Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 17, 2005... COINCIDENCES, CHAOS, AND ALL THAT MATH JAZZ EDWARD B. BURGER AND MICHAEL STARBIRD For some people, the complicated equations and mathematical symbols behind probability, statistics, and chaos theory seem frustratingly abstract or...

Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 17, 2005... OUR INNER APE: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are FRANS DE WAAL Can only humans behave humanely? Renowned primatologist De Waal argues that many of the characteristics usually considered unique to humankind are...

Dangerous Doses: How Counterfeiters Are Contaminating America's Drug Supply.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
September 17, 2005... DANGEROUS DOSES: How Counterfeiters Are Contaminating America's Drug Supply KATHERINE EBAN Investigative reporter Eban began her research into counterfeit drugs for a 2003 article for Self magazine. After being shocked by the seedy...

Just Feynman.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
September 17, 2005... A lot of people ask how someone like Richard Feynman, who played the bongo drums, loved practical jokes, and was an amateur safecracker and a bon vivant, could also win a Nobel Prize in Physics ("Dr. Feynman's Doodles: How one scientist's...

Green peeves.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
September 17, 2005... I have some problems with "Mommy Greenest: Evidence grows for parental care in plants" (SN: 7/23/05,p. 59). The section regarding alpine thistles seems to ignore the huge moisture-collecting effect of aboveground matter, such as dead plant...

Meds alert: old schizophrenia drug stands up to new ones.
September 24, 2005... A class of recently developed medications for schizophrenia has rapidly become psychiatrists' treatment of choice. Small, pharmaceutical company-funded trials had suggested that the drugs are safer and more effective than a generation of...

Steep degrade ahead: road salt threatens waters in Northeast.(Brief Article)
September 24, 2005... Chlorides from road salt used in the winter to clear icy highways in the northeastern United States are increasingly tainting streams throughout the region, according to long-term studies of water quality. Measurements in rural New...

Fresh Mars: craft views new gullies, craters, and landslides.
September 24, 2005... Mars may have been cold and dry for billions of years, but it's still an active place. A comparison of images taken just a few years apart by a Mars-orbiting spacecraft reveals freshly carved gullies and recent landslides. It also shows that a...

Dim view: darkening skies a regional phenomenon.(solar radiation)
September 24, 2005... The decline in the solar radiation reaching Earth's surface in the latter half of the 20th century--a trend observed at many locations worldwide for several decades--turns out to have been primarily a regional phenomenon, new research suggests....

Balls of fire: bees carefully cook invaders to death.
September 24, 2005... Honeybees that defend their colonies by killing wasps with body heat come within 5[degrees]C of cooking themselves in the process, according to a study in China. At least two species of honeybees there, the native Apis cerana and the...

Organic choice: pesticides vanish from body after change in diet.(Organophosphates)
September 24, 2005... Children can eliminate their bodies' loads of agricultural pesticides by eating organically grown products, a 15-day experiment suggests. The finding bolsters the case that people dining on organic food avoid potentially toxic pesticides, but...

Pack rat piles: rodent rubbish provides ice age thermometer.
September 24, 2005... For a person, life as a pack rat is one of obsessively collecting, say, newspapers, computer parts, food containers, or maybe all of these. But a literal pack rat gathers plant fragments, bone bits, fecal pellets, and even, occasionally,...

Sharpening the focus of mammograms.(Mammography)(Brief Article)
September 24, 2005... A mammogram of healthy breast tissue recorded on film isn't as clear as a digital mammogram. Scientists X-rayed 42,760 women's breasts with both digital and film machines. Overall, the techniques detected cancer equally well. But in women with...

Childhood's end: in Thailand, poverty isn't the primary reason that girls become prostitutes.
September 24, 2005... For people concerned with child welfare and human rights, the rural villages of northern Thailand loom as a heart of darkness. National policies on land ownership have led to the demise of many family farms in this agricultural area during the...

Save the flowers: would-be scent engineers aim to resurrect lost floral fragrance.
September 24, 2005... Vince Agnes, as well-appointed as the flowers that he has been selling for more than 60 years in his shop in Silver Spring, Md., remembers when all his roses smelled as good as they looked. When he opened for business in the 1940s, there were...

Keeping Hubble from being hobbled.(National Aeronautics and Space Administration to repair Hubble Space Telescope)(Brief Article)
September 24, 2005... With a repair mission seriously in doubt, time is starting to run out for the aging Hubble Space Telescope. Late last month, NASA took steps to conserve a key piece of equipment on the orbiting observatory. Engineers shut down one of Hubble's...

West Nile virus fells endangered condor.(Fish and Wildlife Service, California condor)(Brief Article)
September 24, 2005... A cliff-dwelling California condor chick in Ventura County, Calif., died in late August from a West Nile virus infection. The chick is one of only four of its species born in the wild this year. The 3-month-old bird's illness was...