Uncategorized
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19134
Are we breaking the laws of thermodynamics? I often wonder, in discussions of hydrogen as fuel, how one can provide energy to split water to get hydrogen and oxygen, then react them together as fuel, and expect ever to get a net gain in energy. Tom OstwaldUniversity of CaliforniaSanta Barbara, Calif. The media have lately […]
- Earth
Clipping the Fin Trade
New research and policy developments aim to curb the wasteful and gruesome practice of killing sharks solely for their fins.
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19096
The Japanese have developed an “artificial shark-fin machine” that produces a product quite similar in texture to the real thing. It’s being used in restaurants in Hong Kong. Let’s hope people’s tastes change before it is too late for the sharks. P.W.L. KwanBoston, Mass.
- Math
Tilt-A-Whirl Chaos (II)
Tilt-A-Whirl in action. Sellner Manufacturing Co. The Tilt-A-Whirl amusement park ride serves as a wonderful example of a chaotic system. The unpredictable motion of the Tilt-A-Whirl’s cars occurs when the ride’s seven platforms travel at a speed of about 6.5 revolutions per minute along the undulating, circular track (see Tilt-A-Whirl Chaos (I), April 22, 2000). […]
- Health & Medicine
Asthma pressure may shrink airways
Mechanical stress from constricting muscles could cause airway-lining cells to reproduce, eventually thickening the lining and narrowing the air passage.
- Chemistry
Now, nylon comes in killer colors
Chemists are improving antibacterial fabrics by treating them with compounds that prolong their killing power and add color.
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The planet that isn’t
An astronomer has formally retracted her claim that she and her colleagues had likely taken the first image of a planet outside the solar system.
- Astronomy
Observatory on a suicide mission
Fearing that its 9-year-old workhorse, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, could plunge uncontrollably through the atmosphere if one more of its gyroscopes fails, NASA has decided to crash the spacecraft into the Pacific Ocean in early June.
- Health & Medicine
Chemotherapy baldness thwarted in rats
Scientists studying rats have now developed a medication that wards off chemotherapy-induced baldness.
- Health & Medicine
Protein predicts prostate cancer spread
Prostate cancer patients who harbor high concentrations of a protein called thymosine beta-15 in their tumors face an increased risk that the cancer will spread.
- Health & Medicine
Getting melanoma chemotherapy to work
A drug that turns off a gene that blocks the action of chemotherapy in melanoma shows promise against this lethal skin cancer.
- Health & Medicine
High estrogen linked to lung cancer
Estrogen receptors proliferating on tumor cells in women's lungs may account for why women seem more easily affected by the carcinogenic effects of tobacco smoke.
