More Stories from the February 26, 2000 issue
- Health & Medicine
Marrow Can Hide Breast Cancer Cells
Breast cancer patients who have stray cancer cells in bone marrow are more likely to die of cancer or have a recurrence of cancer elsewhere in the body than are breast cancer patients not harboring such cells.
-
Shotgun approach bags the fruit fly genome
Scientists announced the completion of the Drosophila genome-sequencing project.
- Animals
New frog-killing disease may not be so new
The skin disease that savaged amphibians in remote wildernesses in the 1990s has been linked to outbreaks in the 1970s.
- Archaeology
Vase shows that ancients dug fossils, too
A painting on an ancient Corinthian vase may be the first record of a fossil find.
- Physics
Manhandled molecules, midget memories
A thick coating of organic chemicals can record information at densities potentially a million times greater than is possible with current compact disk technology.
- Chemistry
Power plants: Algae churn out hydrogen
Green algae can produce hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel that could one day power pollution-free cars.
- Astronomy
Votes cast for and against the WIMP factor
Physicists this week duked it out over a bunch of WIMPs, elementary particles that—if they exist—could solve a decades-old mystery in cosmology and help unify the four fundamental forces of nature.
-
Survey raises issue of isolated Web users
A controversial study suggests that heavy users of the Internet become socially isolated.
-
Treatment enigma for disturbed kids
Two new studies offer conflicting views of the effectiveness of mental-health services for children and teenagers.
-
Anatomy of antisocial personality
A disturbance in the brain's prefrontal cortex may either contribute to or result from a psychiatric condition called antisocial personality disorder.
- Math
A fair deal for housemates
A new mathematical recipe for fair division allows people to resolve disputes over the splitting up of rent, goods, or even burdensome chores.
- Math
Packing spheres around a sphere
A mathematician has proved that the optimal arrangement of 12 identical spheres around and touching a 13th is a highly symmetric pattern based on the 12-faced geometric shape known as the dodecahedron.
- Health & Medicine
Hear, Hear
A 14-year study of twin babies shows definitively for the first time that there's a link between middle ear infections and heredity.
- Earth
Climate’s Long-Lost Twin
New geological evidence suggests that humans have started exploiting fossil fuels and altering Earth's atmosphere at precisely the moment when greenhouse gases could do the most damage to climate.
-
Genes to Grow On
Researchers studying children with Williams syndrome say that the unusual condition emerges through a developmental process that's influenced but not predetermined by a genetic defect.
