USA TODAY articles from June 2004

USA TODAY archives from June 2004

Election snafus still not resolved.(Electronic Voting)
June 1, 2004... Electronic voting has its perils. Imagine this odd scenario on Election Day. You step inside a voting booth and are faced with a red curtain. Behind it is a man who fills out your ballot as you tell him whom you want for president, for city...

Computers help coordinate troops.(Warfare)
June 1, 2004... A software system that may help the U.S. military and its allied forces lift the "fog of war" in their theaters of operation is being developed by researchers at the University at Buffalo (N.Y.). The system is designed to fuse and share...

Airborne pathogens can be burned away.(Homeland Security)(scientists at the State University of New York, Buffalo, develop the BioBlower)
June 1, 2004... A device that in minutes, instead of months, safely and inexpensively could destroy airborne biological agents in structures as large as the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C.--which was closed for an extended period after anthrax...

An Asian catfish.(Science Scene)(giant Asian catfish faces extinction)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... An Asian catfish as big as a bear may disappear in the near future, warn University of California, Davis, conservation biologists Zeb Hogan and Peter Moyle from their research base in Cambodia. Pangasianodon gigas, which grows to 10 feet long...

Biologists may well know.(Science Scene)(DNA sequencing of the fruit fly)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Biologists may well know more about the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, including its entire genome sequence, than about anything else with legs. Now a new effort by the National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, Md., will...

It looks like glass.(Science Scene)(silica aerogels)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... It looks like glass and feels like solidified smoke, but the must interesting features of the new silica aerogels made by Lawrence Livermore (Calif.) National Laboratory researchers are too small to see or feel. Lighter than styrofoam, this...

The same stuff that stains.(Science Scene)(Ventana Research Corp. scientist comes up with tannin phytochemical compound for use in computer industry)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... The same stuff that stains your coffee mug could reduce pollution in the computer industry while saving hard-drive makers millions of dollars in manufacturing costs. The compound is derived from the tannin phytochemicals commonly found in...

First-year medical students.(Science Scene)(use "virtual" microscope, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... First-year medical students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are finding less need to adjust a traditional microscope in their histology curriculum. Instead they are using their computers and a unique DVD to study the exacting...

A snow-penetrating radar device.(Science Scene)(developed at Advanced Highway Maintenance and Construction Technology research center, University of California, Davis)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... A snow-penetrating radar device has been patented by scientists at the Advanced Highway Maintenance and Construction Technology research center. University of California, Davis. The system is being developed for use on a rotary snowplow,...

Now natural resource managers.(Science Scene)(University of Arizona Web site aids in analysis of the earth's greenness from year to year)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Now natural resource managers can download satellite images to see how green their valleys are. University of Arizona, Tucson, researchers have created a website that allows users to compare greenness from one year to the next, between years,...

Promising innovations from warfare to Mars.(Microtechnology)
June 1, 2004... Some day soon, members of the American armed forces who have to fight in a sweltering desert climate may wear suits fitted with tiny, lightweight heat pumps to keep them cool. In the future, microreactors the size of a cigarette lighter might...

What the Windy City might have been.(Architecture)(exhibition of architectural plans and drawings, Chicago, Illinois)
June 1, 2004... The outward face of the rich architectural legacy of Chicago is seen in its buildings. No one can dispute the prominent positions held by such icons as the Monadnock or inland Steel buildings, the Rookery, and the Hancock and Sears towers, to...

Atomic uniformity key to miniaturization.(Nanotechnology)
June 1, 2004... "Control is the name of the game," says Ames (Iowa) Laboratory physicist Michael C. Tringides. He is talking about the importance of growing atomic structures and ultrathin metal films in uniform sizes and with highly ordered geometries for...

Look out if black holes collide.(Astrophysics)
June 1, 2004... When black holes collide, look out! An enormous burst of gravitational radiation results as they violently merge into one massive black hole. The "kick" that occurs during the collision could knock the black hole clear out of its galaxy. The...

Ancient galaxies revealed by Hubble.(Astronomy)
June 1, 2004... Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science institute, Baltimore, Md., have unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the million-second-long exposure reveals the...

Miniature sleuth searches for toxins.(Detection)(portable chip-size detection system developed at Purdue University)
June 1, 2004... A portable, chip-size version of a detection system that is commonly used by industry and law enforcement to identify everything from agricultural toxins to DNA has been created by researchers at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind. The...

Cosmic dark ages come into view.(Quasars)
June 1, 2004... The most distant known quasars show that some supermassive black holes formed when the universe was merely six percent of its current age, or about 700,000,000 years after the big bang. How black holes of several billion solar masses formed so...

"Swinging" molecule may affect mood.(Chemistry)
June 1, 2004... In work that might clarify the process by which proteins fold as well as lead to new approaches to drug development and computer memory, scientists from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., have made an important biological molecule...

Rising C[O.sub.2] levels prove a mixed blessing.(Agriculture)
June 1, 2004... Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be a boon for agricultural crops, as this greenhouse gas helps plants grow and reproduce more, suggests a study from Ohio State University, Columbus. However, that boon comes with a price,...

"Heroes of the Sky" celebrates first 40 years of flight.(Aeronautics)(historic airplanes on display at Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan)
June 1, 2004... Throughout the 1800s, tinkerers and enthusiasts combined their imaginations with practical research to create hot-air balloons, gliders, airships, and even experimental engine-driven planes. This set the stage for the earliest days of the...

South American weed hurts cattle industry.(Plant Pathology)(soda apple)
June 1, 2004... It sounds like the name of an exotic new drink, but tropical soda apple has been more aptly described as the "plant from hell," say University of Florida. Gainesville researchers who have developed a natural way to control the rapidly spreading...

Bacteria could improve dairy taste.(Fermentation)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Basic sequencing research could lead to tastier, smoother, more-nutritious yogurt or fat-free cheese that feels and tastes more like regular cheese. Bob Hutkins, a University of Nebraska, Lincoln, food scientist, is studying Streptococcus...

Are flame retardants in our food supply?(Contamination)(polybrominated diphenyl ethers)
June 1, 2004... Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), flame retardants commonly used in consumer products around the world, and an emerging environmental contaminant, have been reported in increasing concentrations in people. Little is known about the...

Bottoms up, bubbles down.(Physics)(bubbles in beer)
June 1, 2004... An experiment finally has proven what beer lovers long have suspected: When the alcoholic beverage is poured into a glass, the bubbles sometimes go down instead of up, confirm chemists from Stanford (Calif.) University and the University of...

Does global warming affect sea temperature?(Oceanography)
June 1, 2004... A North Atlantic Ocean circulation system was weakened considerably in the late 1990s, which could have dramatic effects on climate, maintains a potentially groundbreaking study from NASA. The slowing of this current--which moves water in a...

Extreme conditions help nature thrive.(Ecosystems)
June 1, 2004... At least some of the problems facing streams in the western U.S. may relate to their loss of extreme water flows, ranging from severe droughts to flash floods, suggests a group of studies by David Lytle, an aquatic entomologist at Oregon State...

Super-shear quakes pack extra wallop.(Seismology)
June 1, 2004... As if people living in earthquake country do not already have enough to worry about, scientists have identified another rupture phenomenon that can occur during certain types of largo earthquakes. California Institute of Technology,...

More faults found off West Coast.(Earthquakes)
June 1, 2004... Five times more mapped faults than previously imaged by scientists apparently cross the fractured Gorda Plate about 125 miles off the Northern California and southern Oregon coasts, according to an Oregon State University, Corvallis, study....

Global warming role reversal.(Survival)
June 1, 2004... Science has a way of forcing us to reexamine some of our basic assumptions about nature. Consider the following statement: Animals that thrive in high temperatures are more likely to survive global warming than those that are less tolerant to...

Mice produce monkey sperm.(Reproduction)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Researchers successfully have produced monkey sperm by transplanting tissue from the testicles of rhesus monkeys onto the backs of mice in a study that has implications for biomedical research, human medicine, and endangered-species...

Chicken litter promotes resistance.(Antibiotics)
June 1, 2004... Researchers may need to take a hard leek at what appear to be certain myths concerning the spread of antibiotic-resistant genes, according to a study by scientists at the University of Georgia, Athens. They found that poultry litter--a...

Altered fish's weak offspring.(Genetics)
June 1, 2004... The genetic modifications that improve animals for human consumption also could doom populations if released into the wild, warn scientists from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind. Biologist Rick Howard and his colleagues have discovered a...

A stirring tale of bacteria.(Organisms)
June 1, 2004... Poetry in motion are not words usually applied to bacteria. Yet, when researchers at the University of Arizona, Tucson, looked into a petri dish, that is what they saw. Groups of bacteria streamed through the fluid, creating an ever-changing...

Theory of sexual selection needs updating.(Darwinism)
June 1, 2004... Darwin may have been wrong about sex--or at least too narrow minded. Charles Darwin's theories of natural selection are well established and generally accepted: "Survival of the fittest" leads to the evolution of a particular species over time,...