More Stories from the September 1, 2007 issue
- Health & Medicine
When antioxidants go bad
Overproduction of antioxidants, usually thought to be beneficial, is the cause of an inherited heart disease.
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Believers gain no health advantage
Strong religious beliefs or practices don't appear to benefit depressed or socially isolated heart attack survivors.
- Animals
Bats hum for sugar too
Some nectar-feeding bats metabolize sugars as rapidly as hummingbirds do.
- Earth
Arctic snow was dirtier in early 1900s
Arctic snow collects less soot now than it did a century ago, but it's still dirtier than it was before the Industrial Revolution.
- Tech
Corny collagen
Corn engineered to produce collagen may someday replace slaughterhouse leftovers as a source of gelatin.
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Light switch
A photosensitive molecule makes switching off a gene as simple as flicking on a light.
- Earth
Tiny tubes, big pollution
Making carbon nanotubes also produces a lot of airborne carcinogens.
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Share Alike: Genes from bacteria found in animals
Bacteria swap genes all the time, but it now appears that they can give their DNA to some animals as well.
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Barely Alive: Ancient bacteria survive in the slow lane
Microbes locked in 500,000-year-old permafrost appear to breathe and show other signs of very slow life.
- Plants
Cretaceous Corsages? Fossil in amber suggests antiquity of orchids
Orchids appeared on the scene about 80 million years ago, according to evidence from a bee that collected orchid pollen and got trapped in amber.
- Earth
Oxygen Rocks: Volcanoes spurred early atmospheric change
Earth owes its oxygen-rich atmosphere to a change in volcanic activity about 2.5 billion years ago.
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No-Fight Zones: School programs reduce violence in all grades
A variety of school-based programs succeed in reducing students' violent and disruptive behavior.
- Astronomy
Dawn of a Disk: Water vapor pours down on embryonic star
Infrared observations show water vapor pouring down on a planet-forming disk around a young star.
- Health & Medicine
Bad Bug: Microbe raises stomach cancer risk
A gene in some strains of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori may greatly increase the risk of stomach cancer.
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Rethinking Bad Taste
Many animals use mimicry to gain a competitive advantage, but are there degrees of cheating?
- Humans
The Wealth of Nations
Analysis of the connections among different types of economic activities explains why some countries succeed, and others fail, in diversifying their economies.
- Humans
Letters from the September 1, 2007, issue of Science News
Risk reversal? “Diabetes drug might hike heart risk” (SN: 6/23/07, p. 397) reports 86 heart attacks among 15,560 rosiglitazone (Avandia) users, versus 72 others in a control group of 12,283. A study coauthor then says that “after statistical adjustment, that yields a 43 percent higher risk of heart attacks among rosiglitazone users.” Simple arithmetic would […]
