Science News articles from September 2006

Science News archives from September 2006

Engineering a cure: genetically modified cells fight cancer.(This Week)
September 2, 2006... By inserting a gene into normal immune cells isolated from melanoma patients, scientists have turned the cells into cancer fighters. This new technique represents the first use of gene therapy to treat cancer, the researchers say. In the...

Wheel of life: bacteria provide horsepower for tiny motor.(This Week)
September 2, 2006... For millennia, people have hitched beasts to plows to exploit the animals' strength and energy. In a modern variant of that practice, scientists have chemically harnessed bacteria to a micromotor so that they can make the device's rotor slowly...

Moss express: insects and mites tote mosses' sperm.
September 2, 2006... After more than a century of speculation by biologists, a lab test has shown that mosses have their own animal-courier system for sperm that's similar to pollination, researchers say. Mosses don't package their male gametes in pollen, as...

When a shot is not: PCBs may impair vaccine-induced immunity.(polychlorinated biphenyls)
September 2, 2006... Exposure to certain pollutants early in life may do lasting harm to the immune system by blocking its response to vaccinations, suggests a study from the Faroe Islands. That archipelago, which lies in the North Atlantic between Scotland...

Head to head: brain implants are better for Parkinson's patients.(This Week)
September 2, 2006... People with Parkinson's disease who get electrodes surgically implanted in their brains regain some muscle control and are better able to handle daily activities than patients given medication only, researchers in Germany find. Scientists...

Doggone! Pluto gets a planetary demotion.(observations of Pluto )
September 2, 2006... The solar system has only eight planets, and Pluto isn't one of them. That's the official word from the International Astronomical Union (IAU). On Aug. 24, astronomers at an IAU meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, voted overwhelmingly to demote...

Katrina's two-sided impact: survey finds disorders, resilience after tragedy.(This Week)
September 2, 2006... In the year following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, rates of serious mental disorders roughly doubled among survivors from Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, a new survey indicates. During that same time, however, the proportion...

Frozen rainforest.(fossilized resin from Amazonian basin )(Brief article)
September 2, 2006... A trove of tiny organisms fossilized in resin, including this Phoridae fly a few millimeters long, is worth its weight in gold, say the paleontologists who found the rare bounty in the western Amazonian basin. The insects, fungi, and plants...

Target practice: researchers shoot for new treatments against tuberculosis.
September 2, 2006... In the "The Three Little Pigs," the wisest pig protects himself by building the house with the strongest walls. In the world of bacteria, the microbe that causes tuberculosis employs a similar strategy. Mycobacterium tuberculosis packs extra...

Mental leap: what apes can teach us about the human mind.(Cover story)
September 2, 2006... At the opening of Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001:A Space Odyssey, a group of apes hovers around an object that has suddenly appeared in the desert. The sleek, black, rectangular object is five times as tall as the apes and clearly crafted by...

Chimps spread out their tools.(ANTHROPOLOGY)(Brief article)
September 2, 2006... Chimpanzees use stones to crack open hard-shelled nuts in Cameroon's Ebo Forest, more than 1,700 kilometers (1,000 miles) east of a river previously thought to have prevented the inland spread of this behavior. Until now, nut cracking had...

Spiral galaxy in the young universe.(ASTRONOMY)(Brief article)
September 2, 2006... The Milky Way today is a spiral-shaped disk of swirling gas orbiting a central hub of stars--signs of a mature galaxy. Researchers have assumed that most younger galaxies are misshapen and full of chaotically moving gas. Now, astronomers...

Sperm in frozen animals still viable years later.(BIOLOGY)(Brief article)
September 2, 2006... Sperm stored inside frozen organs or whole animals can produce healthy offspring years later, a new study shows. Researchers bank sperm from lab animals and other species that they may want to reproduce in the future. The typical method for...

Drug could be depression buster.(BEHAVIOR)(Brief article)
September 2, 2006... Preliminary evidence indicates that a single dose of a drug called ketamine rapidly quells symptoms of major depression for up to 1 week in patients who don't benefit from standard antidepressant medications. Ketamine lowers brain...

How do female lemurs get so tough?(LEMURS)(Brief article)
September 2, 2006... Female ring-tailed lemurs may get "masculinized" by well-timed little rises in prenatal hormones, says Christine Drea. A researcher at Duke University in Durham, N.C., Drea has studied female spotted hyenas, which display a suite of traits...

Female moths join pheromone choruses.(MOTHS)(Brief article)
September 2, 2006... Females of the species called rattlebox moths sniff out each other's male-attracting pheromones and congregate, creating the pheromone-based equivalent of male frogs gathering in a pond to croak a mating chorus, say researchers. The...

Is a Galapagos finch caught in a split?(FINCHES)
September 2, 2006... One group of finches on Santa Cruz Island in the Galapagos may become a new textbook example of the way in which two species emerge from one while still living together. Early ideas for explaining how species arise required a geographic...

Flea treatment shows downside of social life.(Brief article)
September 2, 2006... Among ground squirrels in Africa, the hordes of flealike parasites that build up in shared burrows take an unexpectedly large, hidden toll on the mammal's reproductive success. Colonies of Cape ground squirrels (Xerus inauris) offer a...

How Everything Works: Making Physics Out of the Ordinary.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 2, 2006... HOW EVERYTHING WORKS: Making Physics out of the Ordinary LOUIS A. BLOOMFIELD The heft of this book suggests that it might, indeed, contain the details on how everything works. Its 720 large-format, text-filled pages give a remarkable...

300 Astronomical Objects: A Visual Reference to the Universe.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 2, 2006... 300 ASTRONOMICAL OBJECTS: A Visual Reference to the Universe JAMIE WILKINS AND ROBERT DUNN The vast visible universe is depicted in detailed, full-color photos in this lengthy but hand-size atlas. Familiar objects, such as the sun and...

The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 2, 2006... THE CREATION: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth EDWARD O. WILSON The call to preserve Earth's biodiversity increasingly comes not only from environmentalists but also from religious leaders. Both groups realize that whether today's...

The Human Voice: How This Extraordinary Instrument Reveals Essential Clues About Who We Are.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 2, 2006... THE HUMAN VOICE: How This Extraordinary Instrument Reveals Essential Clues about Who We Are ANNE KARPF The human voice can convey a wealth of information simply by means of its timber and tone. It can reveal not only a speaker's age...

Human Body: A Visual Guide.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 2, 2006... HUMAN BODY: A Visual Guide BEVERLY MCMILLAN Aristotle thought that the brain was just a mass that helped "cool" the spirit. By the time a person reaches age 75, he or she will have taken more than half a million breaths. Science writer...

B line.(Letter to the editor)
September 2, 2006... "A Vexing Enigma: New insights confront chronic fatigue syndrome" (SN: 7/1/06, p. 10) implies that there's not an available cure for chronic fatigue syndrome. I was amazed to find no mention of vitamin B12. I can attest to the remarkable...

Mellow? Hello?(Letter to the editor)
September 2, 2006... It's true that as we grow older, many aggravations that we used to take seriously seem to lose edge ("Older but Mellower: Aging brain shifts gears to emotional advantage," SN: 6/24/06, p. 389). Some of us, however, become grumpy, cantankerous...

Spot before your eyes.(Letter to the editor)
September 2, 2006... The photo "Planet-making disk has a banana split" (SN: 7/1/06,p.5) looks to me more like a solar eclipse, complete with a clear-cut circular blackout in the center and flares. MIKE PATTERSON, GRAND RAPIDS, MICH, The similarity is...

Corrections.(Correction notice)
September 2, 2006... "Gender Divide: Gene expression differs in males and females" (SN: 7/22/06, p. 52) stated that mice and people share about 99 percent of their genes, but the correct number is about 85 percent. "Fewer Drugs, Same Outcome: Simpler HIV regimens...

Copycat monkeys: macaque babies ape adults' facial feats.
September 9, 2006... Scientists for the first time have established that for a brief period after birth, baby monkeys imitate facial movements made by people and adult monkeys. This copycat capacity, until now observed only in human and chimpanzee infants, seems to...

Genes as pollutants: tracking drug-resistant DNA in the environment.(excess use of antibiotics causes antibiotic-resistance genes )
September 9, 2006... A study that traces antibiotic-resistance genes in the environment indicates that they are present even in treated drinking water. The researchers behind the work and other scientists assert that the genes should be considered environmental...

Problem paternity: older men seem more apt to have autistic kids.
September 9, 2006... Children born to fathers who are age 40 or older have an increased risk of developing autism, a new study suggests. Autism is marked by poor verbal skills, repetitive behavior patterns, and social detachment. It shows a hereditary...

Size matters: biosensors behave oddly when very small.
September 9, 2006... Physicists have built tiny instruments sensitive enough to detect single molecules of DNA, and the construction of these sensors generally follows a simple rule: the smaller the better. However, this rule might have a limit, a new study finds....

On the rise: Siberian lakes: major sources of methane.(environmental warming)
September 9, 2006... Recent warming in Siberia is liberating carbon that had been locked in the permafrost for millennia. Consequently, Siberian lakes are making a surprisingly large contribution to atmospheric methane, a planet-wanning greenhouse gas, according to...

Hey, roach babe: male cockroaches give fancy courting whistles.
September 9, 2006... Some male cockroaches whistle at females with surprisingly complex, almost birdlike sounds that vibrate through the ground and the air, researchers find. Males of one of Madagascar's less-studied hissing-roach species, Elliptorhina...

Plowing down the Amazon: satellites reveal conversion of forest to farmland.
September 9, 2006... The clearing of jungle to create cropland is a major and previously underappreciated force behind deforestation of the Amazon region of Brazil, according to an analysis of satellite images. The practice accounts for about one-sixth of recent...

Rare Uranian eclipse.(Hubble Space Telescope )(Brief article)
September 9, 2006... The Hubble Space Telescope has for the first time recorded an eclipse on Uranus. The white dot is Uranus' moon Ariel, which is 1,120 kilometers wide. By blocking the sun, it casts a shadow (black dot to right) on the planet's cloud tops....

Bad-news beauties: poison-spined fish from Asia have invaded U.S. waters.(number of red lionfish increases)
September 9, 2006... With striking red, black, and white stripes decorating its body, fins, and some dozen spines along its head, back, and sides, the red lionfish is at once beautiful and frightening. The football-shaped fish can grow up to 18 inches long and is...

Too much deuterium? A chemical mystery in the Milky Way.
September 9, 2006... A new study appears to solve a 35-year-old puzzle among astronomers about the distribution of an isotope forged just after the Big Bang, but it poses new questions about the ways in which stars form in the Milky Way and how the galaxy was...

Stem cells sense stiffness.(Brief article)
September 9, 2006... Stem cells can sense the texture of whatever medium they're growing on and use this quality to guide their fate, according to new research. Unlike other cells in the body, stem cells start out with the ability to morph into many types of...

Radiant plasma may combat cavities.(helium gas kills bacteria)(Brief article)
September 9, 2006... Here's a new way to flash a smile: Waft a glowing plasma of charged particles onto your teeth. Researchers in the Netherlands and the United States have shown that a radiant vapor made from electrically zapped helium gas quickly kills colonies...

High-protein diets boost hunger-taming hormone.
September 9, 2006... Eating protein appears to boost blood concentrations of a hormone recently found to restrict appetite, researchers report. The findings could explain the success of popular high-protein diets. Four years ago, Rachel L. Batterham of...

Are pollutants shrinking polar bear gonads?(Brief article)
September 9, 2006... The more polluted a polar bear's fat, the more likely its reproductive organs will be undersize, scientists find. They collected gonads from 55 male and 44 female bears killed legally by subsistence hunters in east Greenland. The scientists...

Old drug can stop clots as well as newer drug does.(heparin)(Brief article)
September 9, 2006... A decades-old form of the anticlotting drug heparin is as safe, as effective, and potentially as convenient to use as recent derivatives that are many times as expensive. Some people who develop blood clots deep in leg veins receive plain...

Herpes simplex viruses dip in prevalence.(Survey)(Brief article)
September 9, 2006... Two viruses that cause genital herpes, herpes simplex virus-1 and -2, decreased in prevalence in the United States during the past 2 decades, according to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Among some...

Sleep disorder tied to brain ills in kids.
September 9, 2006... Children who temporarily but repeatedly stop breathing while asleep display learning problems accompanied by chemical irregularities in critical brain areas, according to a new investigation. A team led by Ann C. Halbower of Johns Hopkins...

Plastics agent worsens skin allergies.(plasticizer di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate)(Brief article)
September 9, 2006... Low doses of one of the most commonly used softeners in plastics can aggravate dust-mite allergy, researchers report. The plasticizer di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) is ubiquitous in air, water, and most people's bodies. It's in plastics...

Brave New Universe: Illuminating the Darkest Secrets of the Cosmos.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 9, 2006... BRAVE NEW UNIVERSE: Illuminating the Darkest Secrets of the Cosmos PAUL HALPERN AND PAUL WESSON As technologies for exploring space become increasingly sophisticated, answers to the deepest questions about the nature of the universe lie...

The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 9, 2006... THE SURVIVAL IMPERATIVE: Using Space to Protect Earth WILLIAM E. BURROWS Hell could arrive on Earth tomorrow morning. Burrows opens his book with a tale of massive destruction and chaos the world over. Its trigger: a cataclysmic impact...

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 9, 2006... THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC: The Science of a Human Obsession DANIEL J. LEVITIN There is evidence that music of one form or another has been an integral part of human culture since its beginnings. That tradition continues in all...

Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 9, 2006... MORAL MINDS: HOW Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and wrong MARC D. HAUSER Philosophers have long debated how a person develops a sense of morality. According to Hauser, the director of the cognitive-evolution laboratory...

The Best American Science Writing 2006.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 9, 2006... THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE WRITING 2006 ATUL GAWANDE AND JESSE COHEN, EDS. Surgeon and writer Gawande includes a wide variety of disciplines and publications in the latest of Cohen's series of collections of the year's best science...

Brother bother.(Letter to the editor)
September 9, 2006... If having biological older brothers correlates to homosexuality ("Gay Males' Sibling Link: Men's homosexuality tied to having older brothers" SN: 7/1/06, p. 3), then we would expect that in the past, when families were larger, there would be a...

Through a dino's eyes.(Letter to the editor)
September 9, 2006... "Sight for 'Saur Eyes: T. rex vision was among nature's best" (SN: 7/1/06, p. 3) makes two questionable assertions. First, Tyrannosaurus rex might well have had excellent binocular vision and been a predator, but still have had a handicap for...

Whiff of danger?(Letter to the editor)
September 9, 2006... If the estrogenic properties of lavender oil and tea tree oil are actually sufficient to produce these effects in young boys ("Lavender Revolution: Plant essences linked to enlarged breasts in boys," SN: 7/1/06, p. 6), could they produce...

The tooth, the truth.(Letter to the editor)
September 9, 2006... Please check the picture in "Mexican find reveals ancient dental work" (SN: 7/1/06, p. 13). The teeth shown are lower teeth. THEODORE BLINDER, HAVERTOWN, PA. The story and caption misidentified the teeth that had been filed down 4,300...

Weapon against MS: transplant drug limits nerve damage.(fingolimod used for immune rejection used for multiple sclerosis)
September 16, 2006... A drug originally devised to prevent immune rejection of organ transplants can lessen relapses in patients with multiple sclerosis, a new study finds. The drug, called fingolimod, inhibits immune cells from destroying the fatty coatings of...

Scripted stone: ancient block may bear Americas' oldest writing.(This Week)
September 16, 2006... Road builders in southern Mexico discovered a script-covered block of stone among the rubble in a gravel quarry in 1999. A research team has now announced that the marks on the slab represent the oldest writing yet discovered in the Americas....

Family tree: an arboreal genome is sequenced.(This Week)
September 16, 2006... For the first time, researchers have deciphered the DNA code of a tree. This accomplishment makes the black cottonwood, a type of poplar, the third plant species whose genome has been sequenced. Since 2000, scientists have spelled out the...

Grounded epidemic: reduced air travel after 9/11 slowed flu spread.(This Week)
September 16, 2006... In 2001, the winter-flu season developed more gradually than usual in the United States because of a reduction in air travel after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a new study says. The finding indicates that in the future, restricting air...

Oversize orb: puffy planet poses puzzle.(This Week)
September 16, 2006... Astronomers have discovered what may be the largest planet yet found--an orb that's 36 percent wider than Jupiter and that circles a nearby star. Researchers say that they're baffled by the giant extrasolar body, which has the lowest density of...

Sexually deceptive chemistry: beetle larvae fake the scent of female bees.(This Week)
September 16, 2006... Researchers can now explain how a male bee looking for love out in the desert can be misguided enough to embrace a writhing clump of beetle larvae instead of a female bee. Those larvae, which grow into blister beeries, release compounds...

Solid surprise: high-pressure oxygen takes unpredicted form.(This Week)
September 16, 2006... For more than a quarter century, scientists have been trying to determine the structure of a particular form of solid oxygen. X-ray analysis of the substance under high pressure now indicates that oxygen's two-atom molecules aggregate into...

Pick your antipoison: researchers work to make antivenom safer, cheaper, and more effective.
September 16, 2006... On a warm, sunny afternoon last June, emergency room physician Scan Bush got a call on his pager that made his blood run cold. The number was his wife's, followed by three digits: 9-1-1. Whatever the page concerned, Bush knew that it was a...

Battle of the hermaphrodites: sexes clash even when sharing the same body.
September 16, 2006... Anybody who's ever mused that the world would be better if men got pregnant needs to talk to Nico Michiels. And so does anybody who's asked--or sung--"Why can't a woman be more like a man?" Michiels has seen that world, or at least a version of...

Magma heats up as it crystallizes.(volcanol eruption study reports)(Brief article)
September 16, 2006... Molten rock moving up through a volcano's plumbing prior to an eruption can heat up substantially, an unexpected finding that could affect scientists' models of the eruption process. Magma crystallizes as it slowly loses heat to the...

Better protection.(catalysts with two alcohol groups perform well)(Brief article)
September 16, 2006... A new molecular catalyst shortens a widely used reaction into a one-step process, with a bonus: It makes the reaction's products into one of two possible mirror-image forms. When chemists synthesize compounds, they often add a protective...

Forewarning of preeclampsia.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief article)
September 16, 2006... Scientists have found an early warning sign of preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication marked by high blood pressure. Pregnant women with too much of a protein called soluble endoglin in their blood have a heightened risk of preeclampsia, the...

Women: where are your patents?(women life scientists statistics)(Brief article)
September 16, 2006... While compiling a database of life scientists participating in biotech start-up companies since the 1970s, Toby E. Stuart of Harvard Business School in Boston gave a start when he ran across the name Nancy. It stood out, the sociologist says,...

Compounds pass the smell test.(Isonitriles produce better smelling compounds)(Brief article)
September 16, 2006... A vile-smelling but versatile class of compounds may find a role in more chemistry laboratories with the introduction of easily made, inoffensive versions. Isonitriles, chemicals characterized by a triple bond between a carbon and a...

Undergrad science and engineering are broadly useful.(SCIENCE & SOCIETY)(Brief article)
September 16, 2006... Although they aren't researchers, the majority of people who earned bachelor's degrees in science and engineering at least 10 years ago find their knowledge of those fields useful in their current workplaces. The findings, which come from...

Cyber attack depletes cell phone batteries.(TECHNOLOGY)(Brief article)
September 16, 2006... Bad guys armed with computers might remotely and secretly drain the batteries of cell phones, a new study shows. By commandeering communications channels that cell phones use to capture images and video from the Internet, attackers might...

Link between El Ninos and droughts in India.(Brief article)
September 16, 2006... Scientists report that droughts in India are associated with a particular type of El Nino, the climate phenomenon marked by increased sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific. The rainy season in India occurs in June, July, and...

The Sun.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 16, 2006... THE SUN STEELE HILL AND MICHAEL CARLOWICZ The sun is familiar and, astronomically speaking, rather unremarkable as stars go. Nevertheless, the authors offer dozens of dramatic, high-resolution pictures in this small-format book. Hill,...

Squirrels: The Animal Answer Guide.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 16, 2006... SQUIRRELS: The Animal Answer Guide RICHARD W. THORINGTON JR. AND KATIE FERRELL Squirrels are probably the rodents most familiar and best tolerated--or even beloved--by people in many countries. They're among the most-recognized...

Keywords And Concepts In Evolutionary Development Biology.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 16, 2006... KEYWORDS AND CONCEPTS IN EVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY BRIAN K. HALL AND WENDY M. OLSON, EDS. Nicknamed "evo-devo," evolutionary developmental biology is based on the premise that evolution operates through inherited changes in...

Linear Algebra Demystified.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 16, 2006... LINEAR ALGEBRA DEMYSTIFIED DAVID MCMAHON This guide is for math students seeking a head start and professionals looking for a refresher course in linear algebra. Using an informal style and plain language, mathematician and physicist...

The Harvard Medical School Guide to Lowering Your Blood Pressure.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 16, 2006... THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL GUIDE TO LOWERING YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE AGGIE CASEY, HERBERT BENSON, AND BRIAN O'NEILL One of the most prevalent and dangerous medical conditions is hypertension. High blood pressure has long been known as the...

Hot topic.(Letter to the editor)
September 16, 2006... It seems more likely that a decline of total precipitation and humidity would be the direct cause of both temperature and fire incidence ("The Long Burn: Warming drove recent upswing in wildfires," SN: 7/8/06, p. 19). It is fashionable to blame...

Short shrift to sea sheer.(Letter to the editor)
September 16, 2006... As a malacologist, I enjoyed "Shells may represent oldest known beads" (SN: 7/8/06, p. 30). Although the holes look like what could be made with a stone tool, the Science paper acknowledged that a small percentage of naturally occurring holes...

A penetrating look.(Letter to the editor)
September 16, 2006... When discussing how polarized light can help clarify our understanding of supernova mechanisms, "Astronomy Gets Polarized" (SN: 7/8/06, p. 24) initially quotes Doug Leonard's explanation that "one does not see deeper into an object using...

Stupid-human tricks.(Letter to the editor)
September 16, 2006... On "Live Prey for Dummies: Meerkats coach pups on hunting" (SN: 7/15/06, p. 36), real cats do this too. I have observed many adult cats teaching kittens (not necessarily theirs) to hunt. People who receive "presents" from their cats are not...

Evolution's child: fossil puts youthful twist on Lucy's kind.(This Week)
September 23, 2006... AS fossil hunters crossed a dusty slope of Ethiopia's Dikika region on Dec. 10, 2000, one noticed a child's face bones poking out of the ground. Now, after years of painstaking work to remove the ancient individual's skull and some of the other...

Graveyard shift: prostate cancer linked to rotating work schedule.(This Week)
September 23, 2006... Men who alternate between daytime and nighttime shifts on their jobs have triple the normal rate of prostate cancer, according to a Japanese nationwide study. A variable employment schedule, which can upset daily hormone-production cycles,...

Enigmatic eruptions: gamma-ray bursts lack supernova fireworks.(This Week)
September 23, 2006... Gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe, just got more mysterious. New observations challenge the theory that astronomers had constructed for the origin of many of these cosmic flashbulbs. These flashes of...

UV blocker: lotion yields protective tan in fair-skinned mice.(This Week)
September 23, 2006... A lotion that stimulates production of the skin pigment melanin induces a deep tan in specially bred laboratory mice. Those mice have skin similar to that of red-headed, fair-skinned people, who are notoriously poor tanners. The animals...