More Stories from the April 16, 2005 issue
- Earth
Blowflies shed mercury at maturity
Blowflies that absorb mercury from fish carcasses they feed on as larvae rid themselves of much of that toxic metal when they become adults.
- Planetary Science
A moon with atmosphere
Magnetic measurements by the Cassini spacecraft have revealed that Saturn's moon Enceladus has a tenuous atmosphere containing water vapor.
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Blue light keeps night owls going
A study of nine young men suggests that blue light is more effective than yellow at beating back sleepiness and muting key physiological changes that normally occur in late evening.
- Health & Medicine
Viagra might rescue risky pregnancies
Viagra shows promise for limiting threats of fetal loss from preeclampsia, a type of high blood pressure that frequently occurs during pregnancy.
- Health & Medicine
Blood hints at autism’s source
A new biochemical profile in blood may lead to earlier diagnosis of autism and a better understanding of its genetic causes.
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Breath training aids sprint power
Breath training may help athletes who perform short, high-intensity activities such as sprinting.
- Health & Medicine
Smelly garlic: A lung tonic?
Fresh garlic or its powdered equivalent might prevent a potentially lethal condition in which pulmonary blood pressure is selectively elevated.
- Paleontology
Egg-Citing Discovery: Dinosaur fossil includes eggshells
The first-ever find of shelled eggs inside a dinosaur fossil bolsters ideas about the reptiles' reproductive physiology.
- Health & Medicine
Messy Mix? Combined vaccine yields fewer antibodies
Some common childhood vaccines don't seem to work as well when administered with, or at the same time as, other vaccines.
- Anthropology
Stone Age Cutups: Deathly rituals emerge at Neandertal site
A new analysis of 130,000-year-old fossils found in a Croatian cave a century ago suggests that Neandertals ritually cut up corpses of their comrades and perhaps engaged in cannibalism.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Primitive: Old star sheds light on early stellar formation
Astronomers have found one of the most chemically primitive stars known, dating to just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
- Physics
Built for Speed: Novel transistor design spurns limits
The novel design of what's now the world's fastest transistor opens the possibility of even speedier devices that could operate as fast as a trillion cycles per second.
- Animals
Funny Walks: Cranes bob, bob, bob along when hunting
The jerky neck motions of a whooping crane may help it spot food by keeping its head motionless about half the time.
- Earth
Rice with a Human Touch: Engineered grain uses gene from people to protect against herbicides
A human gene inserted into rice enables that plant to break down an array of chemicals used to kill weeds.
- Health & Medicine
The Race to Prescribe
Race-based medicine could be a stepping-stone to the higher goal of targeting medicines toward the genetics of individual patients, but some researchers are troubled by the implications of practicing medicine according to patients' racial identities.
- Math
Navigating Celestial Currents
Mathematicians are creating an atlas of solar system highways along which spacecraft can coast using no fuel.
- Humans
Letters from the April 16, 2005, issue of Science News
Ax questions, hard answers Another hypothesis for the polish on the Stone Age corundum ax head is that the Stone Age people never had absolutely pure corundum, which indeed would have required diamond to polish (“In the Buff: Stone Age tools may have derived luster from diamond,” SN: 2/19/05, p. 116). It is possible that […]
