Science News back issues from January 2008:
New task: malaria drug might inhibit some cancers.(This Week)
Jan 05, 2008; ... In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers in Tanzania distributed millions of doses of chloroquine to children as part of a 5-year malaria-prevention project. While the study yielded only mixed results against that disease, the researchers noticed a striking drop in cases of Burkitt's lymphoma, ...
Dear reader of Science News.(LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER)(Society for Science and the Public)
Jan 05, 2008; ... I am proud to give you the scoop on some "science news": Science Service next week becomes Society for Science & the Public (SSP). The nonprofit organization Science Service was founded in 1921 to provide more and better information about the burgeoning world of scientific ...
wins independent press award.(Science News Magazine)(Brief article)
Jan 05, 2008 ... Each week, this magazine distills "the latest trends and findings in the ever-expanding world of science into must-know information." Those aren't our words, but part of the explanation that the Utne Reader offered for naming Science News its winner, this year, as the premier source for ...
Plowing the ancient seas: iceberg scours found off South Carolina.(This Week)
Jan 05, 2008; ... Recent sonar surveys off the southeastern coast of the United States have detected dozens of broad furrows on the seafloor--trenches that were carved by icebergs during the last ice age, researchers suggest. The channels, roughly parallel to the coast, are between 10 and 100 ...
Twinkle, twinkle: dark matter may have lit up first stars.(This Week)
Jan 05, 2008; ... The earliest stars in the universe might have been beasts of a different nature than modern stars, a new model suggests. While nuclear reactions between ordinary chemical elements fuel the fire of stars like Earth's own sun, mysterious dark matter might have powered the first stars. ...
Damage control: brain injuries fight off PTSD in vets.(This Week)(post-traumatic stress disorder, veterans )
Jan 05, 2008; ... Brain damage suffered while fighting in a war can undermine core aspects of a soldier's personality and behavior. In two particular neural regions, however, such wounds actually protect combat veterans against developing the severe stress reaction known as post-traumatic stress disorder ...
Whales started small.(This Week)(Brief article)
Jan 05, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The ancestors of whales, some of which are the largest creatures ever to evolve, were probably mammals no larger than a fox. New fossils of Indohyus, a genus previously known only from some teeth and a jawbone fragment, led researchers to identify these ...
Reading the repeats: cells transcribe telomere DNA.(This Week)
Jan 05, 2008; ... TFAGGG, TFAGGG, TTAGGG, TTAGGG. That's the piece of the genetic code repeated thousands of times in telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes. Now, two groups of scientists have independently discovered that human cells transcribe this seemingly meaningless pattern into RNA ...
Addiction alleviator? Hallucinogen's popularity grows.(This Week)(ibogaine )
Jan 05, 2008; ... The unsanctioned use of an obscure drug to treat addiction has exploded recently, a new report finds. A subculture of advocates who say the hallucinogen ibogaine alleviates addiction to opiates has welled up from New York City and spread to small clinics and informal treatment ...
A different side of estrogen: second receptor complicates efforts to understand hormone.
Jan 05, 2008; ... The mice in Jan-Ake Gustafsson's lab are obese, their bones are brittle, and their spleens are unusually big. The female mice produce fewer and smaller litters than normal mice. They also are more likely to develop high blood pressure and a disease that resembles human leukemia. In fact, ...
Not so spineless: behaviors we expect from animals--but quirks and personalities? Studies of spiders and insects say maybe.
Jan 05, 2008; ... Chad Johnson wants to know what's up with all the black widow spiders. So do plenty of other people who've moved to Phoenix, or managed to be born there, in such numbers that it has become the fifth-most-populous city in the United States. Phoenix residents wonder why the population boom ...
Smog's heavy impacts.(ENVIRONMENT)(Brief article)
Jan 05, 2008; ... Breathing smoggy air diminishes the ability to breathe deeply in overweight people more than it does in lean folks. The new finding mirrors an effect recently seen in rodents. About a decade ago, Milan J. Hazucha of the University of North Carolina (UNC) in Chapel Hill and his ...
Tiptoe acrobats get it just right.(PHYSICS)(Water striders )(Brief article)
Jan 05, 2008; ... If walking on water takes grace, jumping on it requires exquisite care. Water striders spend most of their lives on a water surface, typically that of a pond. Microscopic hairs, coated with a waxy substance, make the striders' long legs extremely water-repellent, enabling the ...
Meetings.(Calendar)
Jan 05, 2008 ... American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine Las Vegas, Nev. Dec. 12-15, 2007 ...
Milking performance from damaged brains.(NUEROSCIENCE)(glycerophosphocholine improves mental function)(Brief article)
Jan 05, 2008; ... Given intravenously, a molecule found in breast milk can improve mental function in people with dementia and in victims of stroke and traumatic brain injury. Researchers at the University of Palermo in Italy tested the molecule, called glycerophosphocholine (GPC), for its effect ...
Keeping metabolic syndrome at bay.(NUTRITION)(Brief article)
Jan 05, 2008; ... Chromium supplements might stave off the life-shortening effects of metabolic syndrome, a condition that can lead to diabetes and heart disease. People with metabolic syndrome have high blood sugar levels and high blood pressure, among other health problems. The syndrome mostly ...
Struck from above.(PALEONTOLOGY)(Brief article)
Jan 05, 2008; ... Evidence of an extraterrestrial object striking Earth at the height of the last ice age comes not from a crater in the ground, but from the micrometeorites embedded in the tusks of creatures grazing the Alaskan tundra when the event occurred. Richard B. Firestone, a nuclear ...
An earlier thaw can trim winter logging.(SCIENCE & SOCIETY)(Brief article)
Jan 05, 2008; ... Global warming, rather than increasing opportunities for development in cold northern regions, can detrimentally affect a region's economy. In New Hampshire, for example, the trend toward earlier spring thaws has significantly lowered logging revenues, a new study suggests. ...
No-drive experiment curbs air pollution in Beijing.(ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE)(Brief article)
Jan 05, 2008; ... Traffic-control measures can significantly reduce urban air pollution, a field study done in Beijing this summer indicates. Beijing, a city of 15 million people and 3 million cars, has notoriously bad air, and it's getting worse, says Tong Zhu, an atmospheric chemist at Peking ...
In 2007, Greenland set a melting record.(CLIMATE CHANGE)
Jan 05, 2008; ... The duration and extent of ice melt across high-altitude portions of the Greenland ice sheet last year were the highest they've been in recent decades, satellite observations indicate. By measuring microwave radiation reflected from a snow-covered patch of ice, scientists can ...
Snake Oil Science: The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
Jan 05, 2008 ... SNAKE OIL SCIENCE: The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine R. BARKER BAUSELL A former government myth buster--he has tested claims of complementary and alternative medicine for the National Institutes of Health--Bausell writes that most nonmainstream ...
Magical Moments of Change: How Psychotherapy Turns Kids Around.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
Jan 05, 2008 ... MAGICAL MOMENTS OF CHANGE: HOW Psychotherapy Turns Kids Around LENORE TERR Child psychiatrist Terr, a foremost expert in childhood trauma, draws on her own experience and that of 33 of America's top child and adolescent psychiatrists to explain, step by step, how ...
A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
Jan 05, 2008 ... A LIFE DECODED: My Genome: My Life J. CRAIG VENTER In this "bad boy gone good" autobiography, J. Craig Venter tells of how he went from being a self-proclaimed adrenaline junkie who skipped school to catch waves to the man who raced against the National Institutes of ...
What Is Emotion? History. Measures, and Meanings.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
Jan 05, 2008 ... WHAT IS EMOTION? History. Measures, and Meanings JEROME KAGAN As neurobiologists set out to identify regions of the brain corresponding to fear, anxiety, happiness, and indecision, psychologists may wonder whether those clear categories misrepresent true emotion. ...
Cosmological Enigmas: Pulsars, Quasars, and Other Deep-Space Questions.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
Jan 05, 2008 ... COSMOLOGICAL ENIGMAS: Pulsars, Quasars, and Other Deep-Space Questions MARK KIDGER Sometimes the most basic questions expose big gaps in scientific knowledge. Questions as basic as how did the universe start? How will it end? Humans have pondered the night sky since ...
Missing link.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 05, 2008; ... "Antibiotics in infancy tied to asthma" (SN: 7/7/07, p. 14) reported a correlation but no confident explanation for the relationship between receiving antibiotics and later developing asthma. "Ulcer bug may prevent ...
Do the math.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 05, 2008; ... "Strategies to improve teaching" (SN: 12/8/07, p. 366) says that American students' science and math skills have been falling relative to those of their peers in other ...
The scenic route.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 05, 2008; ... We in Maine were surprised to learn that the beautiful Penobscot Narrows Bridge runs between Bangor and Brewer ("Bad Vibrations," SN: 11/24/07,p. 331). In fact, it connects Prospect, in Waldo County, with Verona, in Hancock County. The three bridges that connect Bangor and Brewer are ...
Dental record.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 05, 2008; ... The DNA analysis indicating that some south Siberian bones from the Pleistocene age are from Neandertals ("Ancient DNA moves Neandertals eastward," SN: 10/13/07, p. 238) matches very well with my interpretation of teeth from those same caves. I proposed in 1990 ...
Risky DNA: autism studies yield fresh genetic leads.(This Week)(deoxyribonucleic acid)
Jan 12, 2008; ... As scientists inch closer to unraveling autism's causes, this perplexing developmental condition increasingly shows its diverse roots. Consider two new genetic investigations. One finds that spontaneous alterations to a tiny stretch of chromosome 16 contribute to about 1 percent ...
Hued afterglow: fingerprinting diamonds via phosphorescence.(This Week)
Jan 12, 2008; ... The eerie phosphorescence displayed by a rare form of blue diamond can be used as an easy, cheap, and nondestructive way to identify individual gemstones and to distinguish natural blue diamonds from synthetic ones, analyses suggest. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...
Mind control: hypnosis offers amnesia clues.(This Week)
Jan 12, 2008; ... Hypnosis can make some people forget and, when given a special cue, quickly remember recently viewed scenes. A new study using the technique may shed light on the process of memory retrieval and the potential for one part of the brain to block it. Hypnosis-induced memory suppression may ...
Heavy find: weighty neutron stars may rule out exotic core.(This Week)
Jan 12, 2008; ... Neutron stars may be weird, but they're not so strange, a new study reveals. Crushed by gravity, matter at the cores of neutron stars--the collapsed remains of heavyweight stars--is subject to a combination of enormously high pressure and low temperature that can't be attained ...
Seeing again: blind fish parents have fry that see.(This Week)(cave tetra)
Jan 12, 2008; ... Keep them in the dark for a million years. Then cross two strains of cave-dwelling fish, now totally blind. It turns out some of their kids will be able to see. Fish and other creatures lose their sight after generations living in caves. Yet working vision genes from one parent ...
Positive signal: lone protons carry messages between cells.(This Week)
Jan 12, 2008; ... Roundworms need protons to poop. New research shows that protons released by roundworms' intestines trigger surrounding muscles to contract, causing the worm to defecate. The discovery marks the first time that scientists have found protons transmitting signals between cells. ...
Bathtub optics: bending light also shifts it sideways.(This Week)
Jan 12, 2008; ... The familiar optical illusion that makes a pencil look broken when half-dipped in water just took a new twist. A new experiment shows that when light bends at an interface (such as between water and air), the light's photons take a sideways shift depending on their polarization--something ...
La Brea Del Sur: the fossil-rich tar pits of Venezuela may rival those of Southern California.
Jan 12, 2008; ... Los Angeles' Rancho La Brea is one of the world's most famous fossil-bearing sites. The tar pits there have yielded more than 1 million fossils representing 50 mammal species, 125 types of birds, and dozens of reptiles, insects, and other invertebrates. But L.A.'s claim to fossil fame ...
Life from scratch: learning to make synthetic cells.
Jan 12, 2008; ... Maggots don't arise spontaneously out of dead, rotting meat. Aphids never materialize within drops of morning dew. Aristotle and others who believed in the spontaneous generation of life were dead wrong. The only time life arose from nonlife, biologists believe, was almost 4 ...
Smoking ups risk for type 2 diabetes.(EPIDEMIOLOGY)(Brief article)
Jan 12, 2008; ... It's well known that smoking causes heart disease and several types of cancer. Researchers now say that the habit also boosts the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, by as much as 61 percent. That's for people who smoke at least a pack a day. Lighter smokers face a 29 percent ...
Purring birds teach their chicks to beg.(ZOOLOGY)(Brief article)
Jan 12, 2008; ... African birds called pied babblers turn out to have their own version of goofy baby-feeding noises--think "Mmm nummy nummy aaaapricots." What's more, the birds actually teach their chicks that the sounds mean food, says Nichola Raihani of the University of Cambridge in England. ...
The warm jungles of ancient France.(PALEOBIOLOGY)(Brief article)
Jan 12, 2008; ... Chemical analyses of amber excavated near Paris suggest that France was covered with a dense tropical forest about 55 million years ago. Amber is a form of fossilized tree sap. Paleontologists discovered copious deposits of the material in the sediments of the Oise River basin, ...
Foster care benefits abandoned kids.(BEHAVIOR)(Report)
Jan 12, 2008; ... A study in Romania finds that children abandoned at birth and placed in state-run institutions display marked advances on thinking and reasoning tests by age 4 1/2, but only if moved into foster care. In contrast, abandoned kids who stay only in institutions experience declines on the same ...
Down syndrome's anti-tumor effect.(GENETICS)(Brief article)
Jan 12, 2008; ... People with Down syndrome face a heightened risk of developing leukemia (SN: 12/22/07, p. 402), but some studies hint that people with the condition might be protected against solid-tumor cancers. A study in mice now shows that the chromosomal abnormality that causes Down ...
Energy forest.(NANOTECHNOLOGY)(Brief article)
Jan 12, 2008; ... Thickets of microscopic silicon wires can dramatically boost the storage capacity of batteries, at least in the lab. Lithium-ion batteries power most modern portable gadgets. During use, lithium ions detach from carbon sheets in an anode and migrate to a cathode. During ...
Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
Jan 12, 2008 ... CENSORING SCIENCE: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming MARK BOWEN Reports of U.S. presidential administrations' successful attempts to discredit and censor scientific evidence about global warming over the past 3 decades ...
A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
Jan 12, 2008 ... A STUBBORNLY PERSISTENT ILLUSION: The Essential Scientific works of Albert Einstein STEPHEN HAWKING, ED. In exploring the vast and complicated terrain of Albert Einstein's writings, it is surely wise to bring along a guide. And none is more qualified than Stephen ...
Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
Jan 12, 2008 ... MIRAGE: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt NINA BURLEIGH When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he brought along some 150 civilian specialists, including astronomers, botanists, chemists, engineers, mathematicians, and even an opera singer. Journalist ...
Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
Jan 12, 2008 ... DINOSAURS: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages THOMAS R. HOLTZ JR. Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for about 170 million years, and paleontologists have discovered and named more than 800 of them. This volume offers brief, ...
Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World.(Books: A selection of new and notable books of scientific interest)(Brief article)(Book review)
Jan 12, 2008 ... BANANA: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World DAN KOEPPEL Did Eve tempt Adam by proffering not an apple but a banana? Why is banana republic much more than a colorful synonym for certain Central American nations? Koeppel presents a concise yet comprehensive ...
Shades of meaning.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 12, 2008; ... In "Going Coastal: Sea cave yields ancient signs of modern behavior" (SN: 10/20/07, p. 243), researcher Curtis Marean refers to Stone Age people using a reddish pigment for "body coloring or other symbolic acts." What reason is there for jumping to this conclusion? As with cave painting ...
Hedge fund.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 12, 2008; ... "Eastern farms have native bee insurance" (SN: 11/24/07, p. 333) says that patches of uncultivated land provide a haven for native bees that can help with pollination. Flowering ...
Word of pain.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 12, 2008; ... "'Knuckle fever' reaches Italy" (SN: 10/27/07, p. 270) says that chikungunya means "stooped over in pain" in an African dialect. But which one? Africa has a thousand languages, many of which have more than ...
Postfix for a prefix.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Jan 12, 2008; ... As a biochemist and a type I diabetic of 24 years, I enjoyed your article on beta cell research ("The Long Road to Beta Cells," SN: 12/15/07, p. 378). However it contained ...
Getting the red out: drug improves kids' psoriasis symptoms.(This Week)
Jan 19, 2008; ... A rheumatoid arthritis drug can clear up psoriasis in most children, a new study finds. The report might be enough to cinch regulatory approval for the drug, etanercept, as the first systemic medication for psoriasis in youngsters. Psoriasis results from runaway inflammation ...
Phoenix heart: replacing a heart's cells could ease transplants.(This Week)
Jan 19, 2008; ... In a step toward growing complex organs for transplants, researchers have stripped all the cells from dead rat hearts and injected the gelatinous empty structures with living heart cells from newborn rats. Eight days later, the repopulated hearts were beating, albeit feebly. ...
Dusty fireball: can lab-made blob explain ball lightning?(This Week)
Jan 19, 2008; ... By trapping and X-raying a mysterious kind of artificial fireball, researchers have demonstrated a technique that may help answer whether chemical reactions power the ball lightning occasionally seen in nature. The fireballs first showed up in the late 1990s in the lab of ...
A thirst for meat: changes in diet, rising population may strain China's water supply.(This Week)
Jan 19, 2008; ... China's rapid industrialization and increasing population, along with a growing dietary preference among its citizens for meat, are straining the country's water resources to the point where food imports will probably be needed to meet demand in coming decades. Economic growth ...
Second time around: some old stars may make new planets.(This Week)
Jan 19, 2008; ... How do you transform an old coot into a virile young whippersnapper? For a puffy middle-aged star, the cosmic version of taking Viagra seems to be ingesting a nearby companion--then burping up the stellar meal. That appears to be the best explanation for how two aging stars, long past ...
When mice fly: bat DNA leads to longer limbs in mouse embryos.(This Week)(deoxyribonucleic acid)
Jan 19, 2008; ... Give a mouse embryo a stretch of bat DNA, and its limbs grow a little longer, a new genetic study shows. The change, though small, may illustrate one evolutionary step on the path to wings. Charles Darwin suggested that a series of such minor changes would be key to building new ...
Infectious voyagers: DNA suggests Columbus took syphilis to Europe.(This Week)
Jan 19, 2008; ... Goodbye Columbus, hello syphilis. When Renaissance-era folk bade farewell to Christopher Columbus and his crew, little did they know that the New World explorers would return with syphilis infections that eventually triggered devastating outbreaks of the sexually transmitted disease in ...
X-raying a galactic jet set.(This Week)(Brief article)
Jan 19, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Jets of energetic particles shoot out from a supermassive black hole in the deepest X-ray image ever taken of the galaxy Centaurus A, 11 million light-years from Earth. In this 199-hour portrait, recorded with NASA's Chandra x-ray Observatory, red denotes ...
Blind bet: despite uncertain odds, many horse owners gamble on stem cell therapy.
Jan 19, 2008; ... No animal has shaped the course of civilization more than the horse. Horses have pulled plows, herded cattle, and brought riders into battlefields and to the edges of continents. Today, horses are carrying their human companions to another frontier--the uncharted territory of stem cell ...
Judging science: courts may be too skeptical of research done with juries in mind.(litigation science)
Jan 19, 2008; ... From Perry Mason to Law & Order, legal dramas have proved among the most predictably popular series on American television. In such shows, a defendant's guilt or innocence typically comes to light only after expert witnesses testify before a jury, justifying--or challenging--theories about ...
Transport emissions sizable, and rising.(SCIENCE & SOCIETY)(Brief article)
Jan 19, 2008; ... Almost one-sixth of the carbon dioxide produced by human activity since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution has resulted from the transport of goods and people--a fraction that is increasing by the year, scientists say. Worldwide, human-generated emissions of carbon ...
Night lights may foster cancer.(CANCER)(Brief article)
Jan 19, 2008; ... Although our bodies evolved to work while the sun shines and to rest at night, people in today's 24/7 society sleep, work, and play with little regard for solar cycles. This flaunting dominion over darkness may come at a cost, however--a heightened risk of cancer. Two dozen ...