More Stories from the March 10, 2001 issue
- Health & Medicine
Sedentary Off-hours Link to Alzheimer’s
People who have Alzheimer's disease in old age were generally less active physically and intellectually between the ages of 20 and 60 than were people who don't have the disease.
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Self-illusions come back to bite students
College freshmen who greatly overestimate their academic potential feel confident and happy for a while, but as they move toward graduation, these students feel progressively worse about themselves and become less involved with their schoolwork, a new study finds.
- Materials Science
Scientists belt out a novel nanostructure
Researchers have used metal oxides to make microscopic ribbonlike structures that could prove useful for developing future nanoscale devices.
- Planetary Science
Debate over life in Mars rock rekindles
Two recent studies could inject new life into the argument that a 4-billion-year-old Martian meteorite contains fossils of bacteria from the Red Planet but several scientists say the reports fall short of resurrecting that notion.
- Earth
Is there a vent in the global greenhouse?
Satellite observations of ocean temperatures in tropical regions of the western Pacific suggest that when ocean temperatures there warm up, the amount of heat-trapping cirrus clouds decreases, possibly providing a heat-venting effect that could help reduce global warming.
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Baboon rumps signal quality of motherhood
The size of the swellings on a female baboon’s rump match her physical prowess for motherhood, a rare case of reproductive-quality advertisement in females.
- Health & Medicine
Two genes tied to common birth defect
Researchers report that defects in either of two specific genes may be responsible for DiGeorge syndrome, the second most common cause of congenital heart defects in newborns.
- Anthropology
Chimps grasp at social identities
Researchers contend that neighboring communities of wild chimpanzees develop distinctive styles of mutual grooming to identify fellow group members and foster social solidarity.
- Anthropology
Yanomami inquiry moves forward
The American Anthropological Association has launched a formal inquiry into the highly publicized allegations of scientific misconduct by anthropologists and others working in South America among the Yanomami Indians.
- Health & Medicine
Less morphine may be more
In mice, very low doses of morphine combined with even lower doses of a drug that usually blocks morphine's effect can give greater pain relief than higher doses of morphine alone.
- Health & Medicine
New drug to treat blood poisoning
For the first time, a drug has reduced deaths from severe sepsis, a life-threatening immune reaction occurring in 750,000 people in the United States each year.
- Paleontology
First brachiosaur tooth found in Asia
A fossil tooth found along a dinosaur trackway in South Korea is the first evidence that brachiosaurs roamed Asia.
- Paleontology
Jumbled bones show birds on the menu
A fossilized pellet of partially digested bones of juvenile and baby birds provides the first evidence that birds served as food for predators.
- Humans
High court gives EPA a partial victory
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency can implement tougher controls on tiny airborne particulates that can get deep inside people's lungs.
- Humans
I do solemnly swear. . .
An international science organization is surveying codes of ethics from around the world as a first step towards considering whether scientists globally need an analog of the Hippocratic Oath.
- Physics
Jiggling the Cosmic Ooze
Spurred by the first tentative sightings after a decades-old search, physicists seeking the universe's mass-giving particle — the Higgs boson — have fired up the world's highest-energy particle collider to join the pursuit.
- Health & Medicine
Making Sense of Centenarians
The number of centenarians is expected to double every ten years, making this formerly rare group one of the fastest-growing in the developed world. Researchers are turning to studies of the oldest old to determine how genes, lifestyle, and social factors contribute to longevity.
