More Stories from the August 26, 2006 issue
- Astronomy
Cosmic bigness
Astronomers have found the largest structures ever discovered in the universe.
- Health & Medicine
Sauna use among dads linked to tumors in children
Men who expose themselves to excessive heat in the weeks before they conceive children may place their future offspring at unnecessary risk of brain cancer.
- Chemistry
Protection from poisons
An Alzheimer's disease drug could be protective against the deadly effects of two nerve agents.
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Stress rate revised for Vietnam vets
A reanalysis of data from a 1988 study of Vietnam veterans finds that 19 percent developed war-related post-traumatic stress disorder, a smaller proportion than had previously been estimated.
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Unusual tumor is contagious in dogs
A type of cancer in dogs is transferred from animal to animal by exchange of cancer cells.
- Tech
The ups and downs of routing fluids on chips
A new way to build microscale pipes in three dimensions boosts the sophistication of chips that manipulate fluids to perform chemical reactions and other tasks.
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Placebo predictions
Giving patients placebo pills for a week before they begin to participate in trials of antidepressants can help clinicians gauge how well they will respond to the actual medication.
- Health & Medicine
Breast milk may not be enough
Breast-fed infants need vitamin D supplements, at least in winter.
- Astronomy
Enlightened: Dark matter spotted after cosmic crash
In the aftermath of a cosmic crash between two galaxies, researchers say they've detected invisible dark matter for the first time.
- Health & Medicine
Risky Legacy: African DNA linked to prostate cancer
The high rate of prostate cancer among African American men may result in large part from a newly identified stretch of DNA passed down from their African ancestors.
- Math
Fields Medals: Mathematicians win awards for geometry, physics, and probability
Fields Medals have been awarded to four mathematicians, including Grigori Perelman, who proved a famous conjecture about the shapes of higher-dimensional spheres.
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Sweet Finding: Researchers propose candidate sour sensor
A protein on the surfaces of select tongue cells may play a pivotal role in detecting sour taste.
- Animals
Underage Spiders: Males show unexpected interest in young mates
Male Australian redback spiders mate readily with females too young to have external openings to their reproductive tracts, a tactic that reduces the male's risk of getting cannibalized.
- Chemistry
Lacy molecular order
A lacy honeycomb arrangement of molecules on copper suggests the possibility of creating useful nanoscale patterns on surfaces by fine-tuning intermolecular forces.
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Pathogen Preference: Infected amoebas flourish in cooling towers
Cooling towers appear to be more effective than natural waters at fostering novel bacterial species that cause illnesses in people.
- Earth
Mercury Rising: Natural wildfires release pollutant
Fires in high-latitude forests and peaty soils of the Northern Hemisphere may loft hundreds of tons of mercury into the atmosphere each year.
- Humans
Mutant Maps
Struck by an analogy between genetic mutations and flaws in antique printed documents, a biologist has devised a method to analyze such flaws to pinpoint publication dates of rare, undated documents.
- Paleontology
Bone Hunt
Science News reporter Sid Perkins recounts the trials and tribulations of digging for dinosaurs in central Montana.
- Humans
Letters from the August 26, 2006, issue of Science News
Dust to dust In “Not a planet?” (SN: 6/17/06, p. 382), Alycia Weinberger says, “The discovery of a disk around the planetary-mass companion to 2M1207 should be a bit of a relief to planet-formation theorists” because it casts doubt on the object being a planet. But wouldn’t our early solar system have been composed of […]
