More Stories from the May 6, 2006 issue
- Animals
Bird hormone cuts noise distractions
A jolt of springtime hormones makes a female sparrow's brain more responsive to song.
- Humans
Study finds bias in peer review
Researchers have found evidence of bias when scientists review data and the researcher's name and affiliation are available to the reviewers.
- Health & Medicine
Two drugs are equal in preventing breast cancer
A commonly prescribed anti-osteoporosis drug works as well at preventing breast cancer as the sole drug currently prescribed for the task.
- Health & Medicine
Liver regeneration tied to bile acids
Bile, a digestive juice, plays an integral role in the regeneration of liver tissue.
- Animals
Just turn your back, Mom
A female in a species of legless amphibians called caecilians nourishes her youngsters by letting them eat the skin off her back.
- Physics
Confined gas rejects compromise
Pairs of tiny gas clouds of unequal energies mixing inside narrow tubes retain their original energy differences.
- Humans
Clinical trials really pay off
Large-scale human trials of new treatments in medicine have the potential to offer huge economic benefits from improved quality of life.
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Wired for math
The same neural circuits that adults use to perform complex calculations are already at work in preschoolers doing basic math.
- Earth
Tainted by Cleanser: Antimicrobial agent persists in sludge
About 76 percent of a commonly used antimicrobial agent exits sewage-treatment plants as a component of the sludge that's often used as a farm fertilizer.
- Anthropology
Evolutionary Back Story: Thoroughly modern spine supported human ancestor
Bones from a spinal column discovered at a nearly 1.8-million-year-old site support the controversial possibility that ancient human ancestors spoke to one another.
- Animals
No Early Birds: Migrators can’t catch advancing caterpillars
Pied flycatcher numbers are dwindling in places where climate change has knocked the birds' migration out of sync with the food-supply peak on their breeding grounds.
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Boyish Brains: Plastic chemical alters behavior of female mice
Exposure to the main ingredient of polycarbonate plastics can alter brain formation in female mouse fetuses and make the lab animals, later in life, display a typically male behavior pattern.
- Astronomy
Big Breakup: That’s the way the comet crumbles
Scores of telescopes are watching the continuing breakup of a comet as it nears the sun.
- Health & Medicine
Defending against a Deadly Foe: Vaccine forestalls fearsome virus
A single injection of an experimental vaccine prevents infection by the lethal Marburg virus in monkeys.
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Blood Sucker: Like the adult heart, the developing heart takes advantage of suction
The embryonic heart works more like the adult heart than scientists had long assumed.
- Earth
Particular Problems
Toxicologists and chemists are forging a new field called nanotoxicology as they grapple with assessing the safety of engineered nanoparticles.
- Planetary Science
The Whole Enceladus
Saturn's moon Enceladus has become the hottest new place to look for life in the chilly outer solar system.
- Humans
Letters from the May 6, 2006, issue of Science News
Same old grind “Ancient Andean Maize Makers: Finds push back farming, trade in highland Peru” (SN: 3/4/06, p. 132) remarks on maize starch granules being “consistent with” stone grinding. The presence of lowland arrowroot on one tool is consistent with trade, but it is equally consistent with a wandering hunter grabbing a root in the […]
