More Stories from the February 5, 2005 issue
- Health & Medicine
A drink a day might keep fuzzy thinking away
One alcoholic drink per day can stave off mental decline in elderly women.
- Astronomy
Hubble views bar in galaxy
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a strikingly detailed image of the starlit arms, glowing gas, and dark dust clouds of a barred spiral galaxy called NGC 1300, which lies 69 million light-years from Earth.
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A new test for Alzheimer’s risk?
Failure in visual short-term memory of objects, called iconic memory, could be a warning sign of Alzheimer's disease.
- Math
Hospitals motivated to skimp on infection control
A new mathematical model suggests that the presence of nearby hospitals may give a hospital an economic incentive to relax its infection-control efforts.
- Earth
Ozone saps toads’ immune systems
In amphibians, ozone damages immune function in the lungs, suggesting a possible new contributor to worldwide amphibian declines.
- Earth
Ice age hit Missouri 2.4 million years ago
Analyses of a soil sample from central Missouri suggest the date of onset of North America's most recent spate of ice ages.
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Drugs lengthen worm’s life span
A class of antiseizure drugs significantly extends the life span of roundworms, a finding that could lead to better understanding of factors that influence aging in people.
- Tech
Detecting life on Mars
A new device could look for life on Mars by analyzing the geometric traits of amino acids in soil.
- Health & Medicine
Disease Detector: Chemical test may spot Alzheimer’s
A new test that detects very low levels of protein clumps associated with Alzheimer's may provide an early warning for the disease.
- Astronomy
Puny Parent? Planets may form around tiny orbs
Barely more massive than a planet itself, a tiny failed star 500 light-years from Earth is nonetheless cloaked in a disk of gas and dust from which planets may coalesce.
- Health & Medicine
When Ebola Looms: Human outbreaks follow animal infections
A network of organizations in an African region prone to Ebola epidemics has identified the virus in wild-animal remains prior to two recent human outbreaks, suggesting that animal carcasses may provide timely clues that could prevent the disease from spreading to people.
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A Bug’s Life: E. coli can’t escape old age
Bacteria that divide symmetrically, once thought to be functionally immortal, may age and die just like other organisms do.
- Health & Medicine
There’s the Rub: Football abrasions can lead to nasty infections
U.S. football players who get scrapes and cuts from playing on artificial turf sometimes develop bacterial infections that are resistant to some antibiotics.
- Materials Science
Petrified wood: Quick and easy
Materials scientists have turned wood into stone in a matter of days, mimicking a natural process that takes millions of years.
- Animals
Bad Breath: Insects zip air holes to cut oxygen risks
The need to avoid overdosing on oxygen may drive certain insects to shut down their breathing holes periodically.
- Tech
Outsmarting the Electronic Gatekeeper: Code breakers beat security scheme of car locks, gas pumps
Because designers flouted a well-known rule for making cryptographic systems impenetrable, automakers and other businesses have embraced a wireless security technology that's vulnerable to attack.
- Anthropology
Cultivating Revolutions
New studies suggest that farmers spread from the Middle East throughout Europe beginning around 10,000 years ago in a multitude of small migrations that rapidly changed the continent's social and cultural landscape.
- Health & Medicine
Dangerous Practices
Pharmaceutical companies' overaggressive marketing of risky drugs, compounded by conflicts of interest among physicians and government agencies, is hurting public safety, some researchers assert.
- Humans
Letters from the February 5, 2005, issue of Science News
Not measuring up I love Science News. Now and then, however, you write in terms that aren’t understandable to the average reader. I refer in particular to “Snow Blow: Image of Mount Everest from orbit captures enormous plume” (SN: 12/4/04, p. 358). It states that “weather models suggest winds atop the peak exceeded 50 meters […]
