More Stories from the January 20, 2007 issue
- Earth
Mercury pollution settles in hot spots
Certain areas of North America are particularly susceptible to environmental accumulation of mercury.
- Health & Medicine
Nanoparticles find tumors, form clumps
Newly designed nanoparticles could have dual benefits in the fight against cancer.
- Paleontology
Of penguins’ range and climate change
Variations in the range of Adélie penguins along one section of Antarctica's coast during the past 45,000 years are a keen indicator of climate change there.
- Earth
2006: Hottest year in U.S. history
Preliminary analyses of weather data gathered from more than 1,200 sites across the continental United States indicate that last year was the warmest on record.
-
Salmonella illnesses traced to pet rodents
Hamsters and other pet rodents are probably underappreciated spreaders of salmonella bacteria.
- Health & Medicine
Gene variant shapes beta-blocker’s effectiveness
A medication widely used for heart failure may be most effective in people who have a common variant of a particular gene.
-
Golden Eggs: Engineered hens lay drugs
Researchers have genetically engineered hens that can not only produce useful drugs in their eggs but also reliably pass on this characteristic to new generations of chickens.
- Astronomy
A Cosmic Pas de Trois: Triple-quasar system may signal galaxy mergers
Astronomers have discovered the first example of a trio of quasars, the brilliant beacons of light that seem to be fueled by supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies.
- Chemistry
Fish Killer Caught? Ephemeral Pfiesteria compound surfaces
Scientists claim to have found an elusive algal toxin implicated in massive fish kills along the Mid-Atlantic coast in the 1990s.
- Health & Medicine
Coming to a Bad End: Lost chromosome tips linked to heart problems
Men with short telomeres, the ends of chromosomes, are twice as likely to develop heart disease as are men with longer telomeres.
- Ecosystems
Saving Whales the Easy Way? Less lobstering could mean fewer deaths
A provocative proposal suggests that the U.S. lobster fleet in the Gulf of Maine could reduce the number of traps, maintain its profits, and improve life for endangered right whales.
- Paleontology
Going Under Down Under: Early people at fault in Australian extinctions
A lengthy, newly compiled fossil record of Australian mammals bolsters the notion that humanity's arrival on the island continent led to the extinction of many large creatures there.
-
Starved for Assistance: Coercion finds a place in the treatment of two eating disorders
Attempts by family, friends, and others to coerce people with serious eating disorders into getting mental-health care provide a valuable jump-start to treatment.
- Humans
Weighing In on City Planning
Accumulating evidence suggests that urban sprawl discourages physical activity and may thereby contribute to obesity and related health problems.
- Earth
Counterintuitive Toxicity
Toxicologists risk missing important health effects, both good and bad, if they don't begin regularly probing the impacts of very low doses of poisons.
- Humans
Letters from the January 20, 2007, issue of Science News
Sea tales In “Dashing Rogues” (SN: 11/18/06, p. 328) on rogue waves, you make no mention of the use of satellite data, which is ideal for this sort of study. Two projects, in particular, are of great relevance: the European Union’s MaxWave study and the subsequent WaveAtlas project. The former, with just 3 weeks’ data, […]
