More Stories from the August 11, 2001 issue
- Health & Medicine
Inflammation linked to diabetes
Women who go on to develop diabetes seem to have signs of widespread, low-level inflammation years before they have symptoms of the disease.
- Health & Medicine
Chemotherapy leads to bone loss
In women with early-stage breast cancer, malfunctioning ovaries and significant bone loss can occur within 6 months of chemotherapy treatment.
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Medicinal mirth gets research rebuke
Little scientific evidence to date supports any of the purported physical health benefits of laughter and humor, a psychologist concludes.
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Nursing moms face meds dilemma
A research review yields a little advice and a lot of uncertainty for nursing mothers with mental disorders who may expose their babies to potential dangers if they take prescribed psychoactive drugs.
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New robot frog gets into fights
Researchers have finally managed to build a robot frog that can provoke male frogs to attack.
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Do parents with extra help goof off?
When researchers stepped in to help feed baby sparrows, the parents did not slack off but brought even more food.
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River dolphins can whistle, too, sort of
In the most elaborate attempt so far to eavesdrop on Brazil's pink river dolphins, researchers have detected what may be a counterpart to seafaring dolphins' whistles.
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Funnel-web males send knockouts in air
Male funnel-web spiders seem to waft some kind of gas toward females that renders the females limp, enabling the males to mate without being eaten.
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The trouble with small male spiders
A test of an old view of sexual cannibalism—that it's a way of rejecting suitors—finds that small males lose out, but not from attacks by females.
- Health & Medicine
Insect-saliva vaccine thwarts parasite
Mice inoculated with a component of sand fly saliva develop immunity to Leishmania, a protozoan that infects hundreds of thousands of people in the tropics each year.
- Health & Medicine
Antioxidants + heart drugs = bad medicine?
Taking dietary antioxidant supplements along with certain cholesterol-regulating drugs may diminish the effectiveness of those drugs in boosting the so-called good cholesterol.
- Ecosystems
Marine plankton put nitrogen in a fix
New genetic analyses of tropical marine microorganisms hint that some species are converting significant amounts of atmospheric nitrogen into nutrients, helping to fortify the base of the ocean's food pyramid.
- Tech
New method lights a path for solar cells
Using a technique in which chemical ingredients assemble themselves, a research team has developed a potentially inexpensive way of making solar cells.
- Animals
Bat bites bird. . .in migration attacks
The largest bat in Europe may hunt down migrating birds.
- Astronomy
Light’s Debut: Good Morning, Starshine!
Astronomers have at last detected signs of one of the earliest and least-understood eras in the universe: the murky time just before the first stars and quasars flooded the cosmos with light.
- Physics
Electrons rock and roll in nanotubes
New probes of tiny carbon nanotubes reveal that the wavelike, quantum nature of electrons plays a role in tube properties and may even make possible novel electronic components that harness quantum effects.
- Health & Medicine
Ancient Estrogen
A jawless fish ancestor may have revealed the most ancient of hormones and how current hormones evolved from it.
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Brains in Dreamland
Sigmund Freud's century-old dream theory gets a contrasting reception from two current neuroscientific accounts of how and why the brain generates dreams.
