More Stories from the August 30, 2008 issue
- Space
Saturn’s moon may host an ocean
The Cassini spacecraft has found what may be the strongest evidence yet that Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus has an ocean beneath its icy surface.
- Computing
Building ‘The Matrix’
Simulating new materials could help in building them — but only quantum simulators could fully model reality. A team reports a first step in realizing quantum simulation.
- Paleontology
Soft tissue in fossils still mysterious
New research suggests modern biofilms could contaminate ancient fossils.
- Archaeology
Greeks followed a celestial Olympics
A Greek gadget discovered more than a century ago in a 2,100-year-old shipwreck not only tracked the motion of heavenly bodies and predicted eclipses, but also functioned as a sophisticated calendar and mapped the four-year cycle of the ancient Greek Olympics.
- Health & Medicine
Dopamine could help the sleep-deprived still learn
Sleep loss impairs fruit flies’ ability to learn, just as it does in people. But boosting dopamine in the flies can erase these learning deficits.
- Space
Officially ice
Phoenix Mars Lander detects water, a landmark that, along with other successes, prompts NASA to extend the mission.
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- Physics
Carbon tubes, but not nano
Trying to grow better, longer nanotubes, researchers accidentally discover a new type of carbon filament, colossal carbon tubes, which are tens of thousands of times thicker.
- Life
Making T cells tougher against HIV
Delivering small interfering RNAs, or siRNAs, to human immune cells in mice protects the cells from HIV and suggests future therapy for patients.
- Chemistry
Fingerprints go high-tech
A new chemical technique shows promise in identifying traces of explosives, illicit drugs and perhaps even signs of disease.
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- Physics
Invisibility within sight
Two new studies take steps toward practical materials that can bend light backward, which could lead to invisibility cloaks.
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Disaster Goes Global
The eruption in 1600 of a seemingly quiet volcano in Peru changed global climate and triggered famine as far away as Russia
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Evolution’s Ear
Recent changes in hearing-related genes may have influenced language development
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Pop chirp bite crunch chew
The ultrasonic din of dying trees inspires a new kind of research to save forests from beetle attacks — and battle climate change
