More Stories from the June 17, 2000 issue
- Earth
Excreted Drugs: Something Looks Fishy
Drugs that the body can't fully use enter waste water, where they may affect aquatic life—or wind up in tap water.
- Tech
Satellite links may don quantum cloaks
A theoretically foolproof scheme to shield secrets via the laws of quantum mechanics demonstrates its readiness to take on Earth-satellite communications.
- Health & Medicine
Common antibiotic may cure river blindness
Tests in cows suggest that tetracycline might kill the tiny worm that spreads river blindness, a disease that infects about 18 million people.
- Archaeology
Neandertals’ diet put meat in their bones
Chemical analyses of Neandertals' bones portray these ancient Europeans as skillful hunters and avid meat eaters, countering a theory that they mainly scavenged scraps of meat from abandoned carcasses.
- Astronomy
Black holes and galaxies may grow up together
Astronomers have new and, for the first time, quantitative evidence that bigger black holes reside at the centers of bigger galaxies.
-
Mice have a sharp nose for pheromones
Mice can detect pheromones with great sensitivity and in a way that's distinct from that of the main olfactory system.
- Animals
Single singing male toad seeks same
Male spadefoot toads of the Spea multiplicata species evaluate male competitors by the same criterion females use.
- Physics
Stretched matter goes to unusual extremes
Researchers have discovered that several unusual forms of matter with extremely high or low densities can expand laterally in one direction and contract in another when extended.
-
Old lemming puzzle gets new answer
A novel analysis suggests food supply variations as the answer to the decades-old puzzle of what makes lemming populations boom and bust.
-
Biodiversity may lessen Lyme disease
A survey of Lyme disease rates suggests that a greater diversity of small mammals and lizards may help keep the rates down.
- Health & Medicine
Did colonization spread ulcers?
A comparison of strains of Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes ulcers, suggests that colonists brought it to the New World.
- Health & Medicine
New tests may catch bicyclers on dope
Two new tests, on blood and urine, detect the presence of synthetic erythropoietin, a drug that boosts red blood cell counts and enhances stamina.
- Math
Pursuing punctured polyhedra
A mathematician has proved that it's possible to construct a mathematical shape made up of flat faces and straight edges in which every face has a "hole" where the vertex of one constituent polyhedron pokes into the face of another.
- Math
Super Bowls and stock markets
The predictive power of the Super Bowl "theory," which involves an apparent correlation between stock market performance and the results of the National Football League championship game, has declined precipitously in recent years.
- Physics
Atom microchips get off the ground
Becoming smaller and more versatile, microchips using atoms instead of electrons promise both to improve atomic physics experiments and to pave the way for new technologies such as quantum computers.
- Physics
Light chips find a place to take root
The fabrication of an artificial, inside-out opal of silicon promises to make all-optical microchips possible
-
- Math
The Power of Partitions
Writing a whole number as the sum of smaller numbers springs a mathematical surprise.
