More Stories from the November 22, 2008 issue
- Life
Avian airlines: Alaska to New Zealand nonstop
Tracked bar-tailed godwits break previous nonstop flight record for birds.
- Animals
Spider males good for mating, food
Expectant mothers, including spiders, need to eat well. For Mediterranean tarantulas, a male suitor tastes just fine.
- Neuroscience
Selective memory
Using genetic engineering and chemical manipulation, scientists erased the memory of a stressful experience from a mouse’s brain.
- Health & Medicine
Closest look yet at lung cancer genes
A large study offers clues to the genetics behind lung cancer.
- Health & Medicine
Drug may offer MS turnaround
A drug used against leukemia can ease disability in early-stage multiple sclerosis patients over a three-year span.
- Archaeology
Return of the kings
Excavations in southern Jordan have incited controversy about whether a copper-producing society existed there 3,000 years ago, and whether it was controlled by Israeli kings described in the Old Testament.
- Health & Medicine
Stopping rotavirus before it hits
A vaccine against rotavirus shows potent protection against the diarrhea-causing pathogen in its first year of widespread use.
- Astronomy
Double the rubble: Nearby star system has two asteroid belts
Epsilon Eridani hosts an inner asteroid belt and planet arranged like those in the solar system.
- Health & Medicine
Fungal meningitis spreads in Pacific Northwest
A fungus called Cryptococcus gattii that causes meningitis is slowly making its way down the North American West Coast.
- Health & Medicine
Malaria takes on the top meds
Malaria is thwarting frontline drugs called artemisinins in Cambodia.
- Animals
Farm chemicals can indirectly hammer frogs
A widely used agricultural weed killer teams up with fertilizer to render frogs especially vulnerable to debilitating parasites.
- Health & Medicine
A sugar helps E. coli go down
Some harmful strains of E. coli might rely on something sweet to do harm.
- Chemistry
Oldest evidence for complex life in doubt
Chemical biomarkers in ancient Australian rocks, once thought to be the oldest known evidence of complex life on Earth, may have infiltrated long after the sediments were laid down, new analyses suggest.
- Health & Medicine
Itch
When it comes to sensory information detected by the body, pain is king, and itch is the court jester. But that insistent, tingly feeling—satisfied only by a scratch—is anything but funny to the millions of people who suffer from it chronically.
- Space
Half-life (more or less)
Physicists are stirred by claims that the sun may change what’s unchangeable—the rate of radioactive decay.
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