Science News articles from September 2007

Science News archives from September 2007

Share alike: genes from bacteria found in animals.(This Week)
September 1, 2007... Some insects and roundworms pick up DNA from bacteria living within their cells, new research shows. The DNA transfer occurs in the animals' egg cells, so the genetic modification passes between generations. The mechanism therefore...

Barely alive: ancient bacteria survive in the slow lane.(This Week)
September 1, 2007... Microbes in 500,000-year-old permafrost breathe, although at a very slow pace, and show other signs of life, according to a new report. If confirmed, the findings would be the first evidence of metabolism remaining active over geologic time...

Cretaceous corsages? Fossil in amber suggests antiquity of orchids.(This Week)
September 1, 2007... The first undisputed fossil of an orchid part has enabled scientists to estimate that the prized flowers appeared on the botanical scene around 80 million years ago. With more than 25,000 species, orchids are the largest and most diverse...

Oxygen rocks: volcanoes spurred early atmospheric change.(This Week)
September 1, 2007... The young Earth supported little multicellular life until its atmosphere acquired a healthy portion of oxygen. That change has been credited to the rise of cyanobacteria, known as blue-green algae, that produce oxygen by photosynthesis. Now,...

No-fight zones: school programs reduce violence in all grades.(This Week)
September 1, 2007... As students head back to school this week, violence will follow a sizable number of them. Roughly 13 percent of public high school students report having had a fight on school property during the past school year. About 8 percent say that they...

Dawn of a disk: water vapor pours down on embryonic star.(This Week)
September 1, 2007... Even as it forms within a cloud of gas and dust, a nascent star develops a doughnut-shaped disk around it. This is the "proto-planetary disk" that might spawn planets. Using an infrared telescope to peer inside a dusty stellar womb 1,000...

Bad bug: microbe raises stomach cancer risk.(This Week)(Helicobacter pylori)
September 1, 2007... Some strains of a common bacterium harbor a gene that may underlie a huge share of stomach cancers, a new study finds. The bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, has been linked to gastritis, ulcers, and stomach cancer. But while H. pylori...

Rethinking bad taste: how much mimicry is outright cheating?
September 1, 2007... Talking to evolutionary biologists Hannah Rowland and Mike Speed can shake your faith in a supposedly settled area of science. Generations of textbooks have presented animal mimicry as one of the marvels of evolution, allowing two species to...

The wealth of nations: a country's competitive edge can spread industry to industry, like a disease.(economic conditions of developing countries)
September 1, 2007... The economies of poor and developing countries often depend almost exclusively on a single product-perhaps timber or coffee--or on a handful of products at most. That's hardly a startling observation, but what's puzzled economists over the...

When antioxidants go bad.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Antioxidants are good for your health in many ways. But too much of them can lead to disease, new research shows. People with an inherited mutation of a gene called alpha-B crystallin can suffer progressive heart failure, but nobody has...

Believers gain no health advantage.(BEHAVIOR)(health and religious orientations of patients)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Among depressed or socially isolated heartattack survivors, those who hold spiritual beliefs, regularly attend religious services, or frequently pray or meditate experience new cardiac symptoms and die from various causes at the same rate as...

Bats hum for sugar too.(ZOOLOGY)(food and nutrition of fruit bats)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Researchers report for the first time that some nectar-feeding bats metabolize sugar at the same frantic rate as hummingbirds do. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Like hummingbirds, South American long-tongued bats (Glossophaga soricina) hover...

Arctic snow was dirtier in early 1900s.(EARTH SCIENCE)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... The amount of soot wafting to the Arctic has increased significantly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution but isn't nearly as high now as it was a century ago, an ice core from Greenland suggests. Greenland has always received...

Corny collagen.(BIOTECHNOLOGY)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Slaughterhouse leftovers such as skin, tendons, bone, and cartilage are often processed into gelatin that's used in many products, including pill coatings and capsules. The primary protein in gelatin, collagen, can now be extracted from an...

Light switch.(GENE CONTROL)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Switching off a gene is now as simple as flicking on a light. Working with zebrafish, a favorite model organism for biologists, Ilya A. Shestopalov and his colleagues at Stanford University showed that, once activated by ultraviolet light,...

Tiny tubes, big pollution.(ENVIRONMENT)(effects of carbon nanotubes )(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... A tiny industry has a big problem: pollution. In the first study of its kind, researchers have found that the manufacture of carbon nanotubes produces airborne carcinogens and other pollutants. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Thousands of times...

Urine tests for cities.(PUBLIC HEALTH)(testing of wastewater)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... A new method of analyzing sewage may offer near real-time monitoring of community-level drug use. The technique can detect mere nanograms of drugs or drug-breakdown products per liter of wastewater. Environmental chemist Jennifer Field of...

Waistland: The (R)Evolutionary Science behind our weight and Fitness Crisis.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... WAISTLAND: The (R)Evolutionary Science behind our weight and Fitness Crisis DEIRDRE BARRETT [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The incidence of obesity in the U.S. population is greater than ever. In this book, Barrett, a Harvard psychologist,...

The Unnatural History of the Sea.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... THE UNNATURAL HISTORY OF THE SEA CALLUM ROBERTS [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The modern fishing industry has reached a level of unprecedented efficiency. Overfishing, however, is not new; it began in 11th-century Europe. Roberts, a professor...

Talking Hands.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... TALKING HANDS MARGALIT FOX [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This book takes readers to a living laboratory for the study of language and the ways in which its acquisition reflect the workings of the human brain. Fox focuses on the difference...

The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... THE NEW TIME TRAVELERS: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics DAVID TOOMEY [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] H.G. Wells' classic 1895 novel The Time Machine sparked the imaginations of millions of people, Among them were a handful of scientists...

Don't Try This At Home: The Physics of Hollywood Movies.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME: The Physics of Hollywood Movies ADAM WEINER [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Many of the sequences in today's action movies, which feature such escapades as driving a car on an asteroid, drilling to the core of Earth, or...

Risk reversal?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... "Diabetes drug might hike heart risk" (SN: 6/23/07, p. 397) reports 86 heart attacks among 15,560 rosiglitazone (Avandia) users, versus 72 others in a control group of 12,283. A study coauthor then says that "after statistical adjustment, that...

Let's be careful.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... "Crossing the Line: Technique could treat brain diseases" (SN: 6/23/07, p. 387) describes attaching a drug molecule to a molecule from the rabies virus that enables the drug to cross the blood-brain barrier. This suggests a possible danger if...

By the book.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... Your review of Alex Vilenkin's book Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes (SN: 6/30/07, p. 411) contained an often-made error. In Guth's inflation model, during the first "zillionth of a second," the universe did not inflate "to...

Gems with impact.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... With respect to the article on kimberlites, diamonds, and mantle fractures ("A Gemstone's Wild Ride," SN: 6/30/07, p. 412), may I suggest that the fractures in question emanate from hypervelocity bolide impacts on Earth. There is ample spatial...

Hive scourge? Virus linked to recent honeybee die-off.(This Week)(Israeli acute paralysis virus)
September 8, 2007... A little-known virus has been tagged as a suspect, or maybe just an opportunistic marker of disease, in the recent unexplained disappearances of honeybees. During the past year, an estimated 23 percent of U.S. beekeeping operations saw...

The Venter decryption: biologist decodes his own genome.(This Week)(J. Craig Venter)
September 8, 2007... For the first time, scientists have decoded and published a nearly complete readout of both sets of chromosomes in an individual. The diploid genome, of biologist J. Craig Venter, reveals much more human genetic variation than scientists had...

Killer collision: dino demise traces to asteroid-family breakup.(This Week)
September 8, 2007... A huge chunk of rock hit Earth 65 million years ago, setting off events that wiped out the dinosaurs. That chunk, astronomers now say, was a wayward fragment from a collision between two giant asteroids in the inner part of the asteroid belt,...

Live wires: axons can influence nerve impulses.(This Week)
September 8, 2007... The "wires" that carry electrical signals among nerve cells in the brain can influence the threshold at which the cells will send those signals, research on mouse-brain tissue shows. The finding challenges the conventional view of nerve...

Role change: mast cells show an anti-inflammatory side.(This Week)
September 8, 2007... As anyone who has reacted to poison ivy can attest, the plant can induce maddeningly itchy skin. Researchers have now found that a cell once thought to be one of the chief perpetrators of this immune overreaction may actually keep the reaction...

Sonic sands: uncovering the secret of the booming dunes.(This Week)
September 8, 2007... Marco Polo, Charles Darwin, and other adventurers marveled at the loud, thrumming sounds that emanate from sand dunes in certain desert locales around the world. Now, researchers say that they've solved the mystery of how the dunes produce...

Bipolar express: mental ailment expands rapidly among youth.(This Week)(bipolar disorder )
September 8, 2007... The rate of bipolar disorder diagnoses for children and adolescents seen as outpatients by physicians shot up dramatically between 1994 and 2003, raising new concerns about possible overdiagnosis of this severe mood disorder among young people....

What goes up: big-city air pollution moves to the burbs and beyond.
September 8, 2007... Jeffrey S. Gaffney, a sunburn-prone atmospheric scientist, set off one morning in March 2006 for a day of field work in Mexico City--without his hat and sunscreen. At Mexico City's altitude, 2,240 meters above sea level, sunlight beating down...

Genome 2.0: mountains of new data are challenging old views.(human genomes and genetic research)
September 8, 2007... When scientists unveiled a draft of the human genome in early 2001, many cautioned that sequencing the genome was only the beginning. The long list of the four chemical components that make up all the strands of human DNA would not be a...

A different view of Uranus' rings.(PLANETARY SCIENCE)(Brief article)
September 8, 2007... As seen from Earth, the rings of Uranus are now precisely edge on. It's the first time this alignment has occurred since Uranus' rings--now known to number 13--were discovered in 1977, and the event is providing an unprecedented view of the...

HIV is double trouble for brain.(NEUROSCIENCE)(Brief article)
September 8, 2007... People who live a long time while infected with HIV sometimes develop dementia. The virus that causes AIDS is known to damage brain cells, and it now appears that the virus halts the creation of new neurons as well. A single protein in the...

Men's fertile role in evolving long lives.(ANTHROPOLOGY)(Brief article)
September 8, 2007... Well past age 50, men can still impregnate women of childbearing age. That lengthy period of fertility spurred the evolution of relatively long lives in both sexes, a new study suggests. In modern hunter-gatherer societies, a substantial...

Virus thrives by hiding.(MICROBIOLOGY)(virus replication)(Brief article)
September 8, 2007... After invading a cell, some viruses cozy up to it's internal membranes before reproducing, but scientists haven't been sure why. Now they've seen that one such microbe, the flock house virus, reproduces in cocoons within the membranes. The...

Lack of oxygen stunts fish reproduction.(ENVIRONMENT)(effect of hypoxia)(Brief article)
September 8, 2007... Seasonal hypoxia, when dissolved oxygen concentrations in water drop below 2 milligrams per liter, is a normal summer occurrence in estuaries. Over the past 20 years, however, pollution has increased the severity and frequency of hypoxia in...

Orangutans hand it to researchers.(BEHAVIOR)(Brief article)
September 8, 2007... Orangutans try to communicate by gesturing in the same way as people do, researchers find. In a series of sessions with captive female orangutans, Richard Byrne and his colleagues at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland offered...

Aura origins show the way in epilepsy surgery.(NEUROSCIENCE)(Brief article)
September 8, 2007... Epileptic seizures are often preceded by auras, which patients experience in many ways: visual disturbances, butterflies in the stomach, or even deja vu. An aura can reveal which part of the brain is spawning a seizure, but multiple auras in a...

Laser printers can dirty the air.(ENVIRONMENT)(Brief article)
September 8, 2007... The smaller an air-pollution particle is, the more likely it will be inhaled deep into the lungs, where it can trigger disease. A new study finds that office laser printers can spew especially small particles. Lidia Morawska of the...

112 Mercer Street: Einstein, Russell, Godel, Pauli, and the End of Innocence in Science.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 8, 2007... 112 MERCER STREET: Einstein, Russell, Godel, Pauli, and the End of Innocence in Science BURTON FELDMAN, KATHERINE WILLIAMS, EDS. In 1943, Albert Einstein invited three friends--pacifist and philosopher Bertrand Russell, physicist...

How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 8, 2007... HOW MATHEMATICIANS THINK: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics WILLIAM BYERS Many people assume that mathematicians' thinking processes are strictly methodical and algorithmic. Integrating his experience as...

Of A Feather: A Brief History of American Birding.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 8, 2007... OF A FEATHER: A Brief History of American Birding SCOTT WEIDENSAUL Birding, which began as an eccentric pastime, has become one of the most popular forms of outdoor recreation in the United States. Weidensaul reviews the history of...

Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 8, 2007... SUPER CRUNCHERS: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart IAN AYERS Conventional wisdom dictates that experience and intuition are unfailingly valuable when it comes to making decisions. Ayers, an econometrician and a lawyer,...

Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 8, 2007... WHY BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE HAVE MORE DAUGHTERS ALAN S. MILLER AND SATOSHI KANAZAWA Ever wonder why people act the way they do? The question remains one of life's mysteries, and for good reason. Although scientists have paid great attention...

Patent pending.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 8, 2007... If Drs. Glass and Venter succeed in assembling a viable synthetic bacterial genome ("Life Swap: Switching genomes converts bacteria," SN: 6/30/07, p. 403), will the genome or the new life form itself be patentable? VIRGIL H. SOULE,...

Whisky or sour?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 8, 2007... It has been reported that vinegar, taken before a meal, can lower postmeal blood glucose. If so, the lowering of postmeal blood glucose by alcohol, as reported in "Alcohol Answer? Drinks lower glucose to protect heart" (SN: 6/30/07, p. 405),...

One more thing.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 8, 2007... "Antibiotics in infancy tied to asthma" (SN: 7/7/07, p. 14) offers two explanations for the correlation of asthma with early infancy antibiotics: a need for the immune system to be trained by early exposure to microbial toxins and a need for...

Corrections.(LETTERS)(Correction notice)
September 8, 2007... "New Clues: Gene variations may contribute to MS risk" (SN: 8/4/07, p. 70) reversed the possible relationship between sun exposure and multiple sclerosis (MS) risk. The story should have said that a lack of childhood exposure to sunlight...

Alliance of opposites: electrons and positrons make new molecule.(This Week)
September 15, 2007... By soaking a silica sponge with antimatter, physicists have made the first matter-antimatter molecules. With further refinement, the technique might be used to briefly condense antimatter into fluid or solid states or even to create the first...

Survivor: extrasolar planet escapes stellar attack.(This Week)
September 15, 2007... From the sizzling outer atmosphere of a sunlike star to the chilly surroundings of a dark, stellar cinder, extrasolar planets keep turning up in the darndest places. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Now astronomers have found a large planet that...

Fish switch: salmon make baby trout after species, sex swap.(This Week)(fish reproduction)
September 15, 2007... Biologists have implanted male-reproductive tissue from rainbow trout into male and female salmon, which then bred a new generation of baby trout. In male-salmon recipients, the trout tissue produced sperm, but in female salmon, the same...

Debate renewed: diabetes drug ups heart risk.(This Week)(rosiglitazone)
September 15, 2007... The popular diabetes drug rosiglitazone, marketed as Avandia, more than doubles the long-term risk of heart failure and increases the long-term risk of heart attack by 42 percent, according to a new analysis. Rosiglitazone initially came...

Brain sabotage: Alzheimer's protein may spawn miniseizures.(This Week)(Amyloid beta-protein)
September 15, 2007... A sticky protein implicated in Alzheimer's disease disrupts the brain's circuitry by inducing seizures that give barely an outward sign that they're happening, a study of mice shows. Excessive buildup of a protein called amyloid-beta in the...

Grazing on the periodic table: some ancient microorganisms lived on a diet of pure sulfur.(This Week)
September 15, 2007... Analyses of 3.5-billion-year-old rocks from Australia indicate that some of the microorganisms living when those rocks formed were able to derive energy from sulfur, the first time such a metabolic feat has been chronicled in rocks of that age....

Spot on: printing flexible electronics one nanodot at a time.(This Week)(e-jet printer)
September 15, 2007... Plastic displays, solar cells, and other kinds of gadgets are attractive for their flexibility and potential low cost. But they rely on materials--polymers, nanoparticles, and carbon nanotubes--that are incompatible with manufacturing processes...

Curry power: an age-old seasoning could help combat Alzheimer's.
September 15, 2007... Imagine that you're living 3,000 years ago in a village in what's now southern India. When you get sick or injured, you visit the healer, who most likely is a practitioner of the herbal medicine called ayurveda. For whatever ails you, you'll...

Consciousness in the raw: the brain stem may orchestrate the basics of awareness.(hydranencephaly and other brain diseases)
September 15, 2007... In October 2004, Swedish neuroscientist Bjorn Merker packed up his video camera and joined five families for a 1-week get-together in Florida that featured several visits to the garden of childhood delights known as Disney World. For Merker,...

How platelets help cancer spread.(BIOMEDICINE)(Brief article)
September 15, 2007... As cancer cells migrate in the body from a primary tumor, they're chaperoned by clumps of platelets. These bloodstream particles shield the cells from damage and help them invade new tissues in the process called metastasis. Researchers have...

Major merger.(ASTRONOMY)(collision of galaxies)(Brief article)
September 15, 2007... Like cosmic bumper cars, four galaxies are ramming into each other in one of the biggest collisions ever recorded. The quartet will ultimately merge into a single galaxy that may be several times as massive as the Milky Way. Kenneth Rines...

Perfect pitch isn't so perfect in many.(BEHAVIOR)(musical pitch)(Brief article)
September 15, 2007... People who can name a single musical note played in isolation have what is called absolute, or perfect, pitch. A new study suggests that this uncanny ability might be distorted slightly by a common routine in Western music and could fade with...

Advantage: Starch.(EVOLUTION)(human saliva and amylase gene)(Brief article)
September 15, 2007... New genetic evidence supports the controversial notion that the lowly tuber propelled humans to the top of the evolutionary heap. Human saliva is rich in amylase, an enzyme that breaks starch into glucose before it's swallowed. People carry...

Ancient city grew from outside in.(ARCHAEOLOGY)(Mesopotamian city)(Brief article)
September 15, 2007... Roughly 6,000 years ago, Mesopotamian cities in what's now southern Iraq began as central clusters of buildings and then spread as orchestrated by authorities. About the same time, a different pattern of city development occurred in northern...

Nanoparticles multitask.(CHEMISTRY)(Brief article)
September 15, 2007... Nanoparticles can play many roles, but they're more often used for tagging and sorting molecules rather than for participating in chemical reactions. Nanoscale bits with magnetic properties, for instance, can enhance magnetic resonance images...

Bloated planet.(ASTRONOMY)(discovery of an extrasolar planet)(Brief article)
September 15, 2007... Imagine a planet nearly twice the diameter of giant Jupiter, yet puffy enough to float on water. Discovered by a team led by Georgi Mandushev of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., this alien orb is both the largest and the...

Blood vessel growth factor also does housekeeping.(BIOMEDICINE)(vascular endothelial growth factor)(Brief article)
September 15, 2007... The growth of new blood vessels, a process known as angiogenesis, is spurred by a molecule called vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Seientists had thought that VEGF's role was mainly to carry messages between cells, but new research...

The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 15, 2007... THE FIRST WORD: The Search for the Origins of Language CHRISTINE KENNEALLY Few human abilities are more remarkable than the capacity for language. Attempts to elucidate language's origins have been thwarted, however, by the A absence of...

The (Fabulous) Fibonacci Numbers.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 15, 2007... THE (FABULOUS) FIBONACCI NUMBERS ALFRED S. POSAMENTIER AND INGMAR LEHMANN The mathematician Leonardo de Pisa, who lived in the Middle Ages and is more commonly known as Fibonacci, had an enormous influence on Western civilization. His...

New Theories of Everything.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 15, 2007... NEW THEORIES OF EVERYTHING JOHN D. BARROW Barrow, a cosmologist and mathematician, expands on his book Theories of Everything, published 15 years ago, in this new look at the quest to explain the secrets of the universe. He combines...

Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 15, 2007... BEYOND AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine J. STORRS HALL Machines that have the capacity to outsmart humans, and thereby take over civilization, have long been the subject of science fiction. As artificial intelligence (AI)...

The Best American Science Writing 2007.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
September 15, 2007... THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE WRITING 2007 GINA KOLATA AND JESSE COHEN, EDS. Science writing has always benefited from its cutting-edge and often controversial subject matter, Kolata explains, making choosing the best writing from any given...

Talk talk talk.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 15, 2007... "Hidden Smarts: Abstract thought trumps IQ scores in autism" (SN: 7/7/07, p. 4) didn't mention that traditional IQ tests are in one sense "language" tests. The Ravens test doesn't involve language processing in a typical manner. A person with...

Troubled thoughts.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 15, 2007... "Trouble in Paradise" (SN: 7/7/07, p. 8) concerning schizophrenia in Palau reported a high incidence of the disorder among first- and second-generation immigrants to the West from developing countries. Could the phenomenon of relatively...

Smoke screening.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 15, 2007... "Smoke This: Parkinson's is rarer among tobacco users" (SN: 7/14/07, p. 20) says that "there may be some fundamental difference in susceptibility to nicotine addiction between people who develop Parkinson's and those who don't." If so, how...

Walking small: humanlike legs took Homo out of Africa.(This Week)(fossil hominids)
September 22, 2007... The earliest known human ancestors that trekked from Africa into Asia possessed legs, feet, and spines much like ours, even as they sported relatively apelike arms and small brains, according to an analysis of 1.77-million-year-old fossils...

Aiding and abetting: a longevity gene also promotes cancer.(This Week)
September 22, 2007... A gene that helps organisms survive damage to their cells can also shorten their lives by fostering tumors, tests on mice and human-cell lines show. The gene, called heat-shock factor 1 (Hsf1), doesn't itself trigger cancer. Instead, it...

Hybrid power: salamander invader ups survival of rare cousin.(This Week)(California tiger salamander )
September 22, 2007... Crossbreeding between the rare California tiger salamander and an invasive species has given the mixed offspring a surprising boost in survival, say geneticists. Though the lineages of barred tiger salamanders and the California tigers...

Nanotherapy: gold-drug combo could target tumors.(This Week)
September 22, 2007... Looking for a way to deliver a chemotherapy drug to cancer patients more safely and effectively, a team of chemists has attached dozens of paelitaxel (Taxol) molecules to tiny gold particles that could carry the drug directly to a tumor in the...

Muddying the water? Orbiter drains confidence from fluid story of Mars.(This Week)(Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter )
September 22, 2007... Evidence for liquid water on some parts of Mars--now or in the past--looks leakier than researchers had supposed, according to an analysis of the sharpest images ever taken of the Red Planet from orbit. But in other places, the new images...

Bumpy bones: fossil hints that dinosaur had feathery forearms.(This Week)
September 22, 2007... Several knobs on a forearm bone from a 1.5-meter-long predatory dinosaur provide the first direct evidence of substantial feathers on a dinosaur that large. Scientists first described fossils of Velociraptor mangoliensis in 1924, but the...

Nanotube press: printing technique makes nanotransistors.(This Week)
September 22, 2007... With a combination of existing methods, some new tricks, and a drop of water, researchers have found a way of stamping carbon-nanotube circuits onto virtually any surface. The technique might lead to bright, flexible displays and to...