More Stories from the November 3, 2001 issue
-
Maternal care may leave brain legacy
Rat experiments indicate that mothers' licking and grooming of offspring induces biological changes in female pups that in turn regulate their maternal behavior as adults.
-
Moms’ touch gives kids social push
Premature babies frequently touched in soothing ways by their mothers exhibited much better social and emotional growth as toddlers than did peers who had been exposed to harsh forms of maternal touching.
- Tech
Cooling film tempers tiny hot spots
Shattering a 40-year-old performance limit, a new layered, semiconductor material promises to spur wider use of so-called thermoelectric devices that cool or heat electrically and can convert heat to electric power.
- Tech
Curve on golf club sends ball straight
Although the curved faces of golf clubs called drivers blast balls sideways, their convex design works just right to compensate for other effects tending to make balls veer off the fairway, new calculations show.
- Earth
Composting cuts manure’s toxic legacy
Composting manure reduces its testosterone and estrogen concentrations, limiting the runoff of these hormones, which can harm wildlife.
- Earth
Kitchen tap may offer drugs and more
Excreted drugs and household chemicals are making their way through community waste-treatment and drinking-water plants.
- Earth
How polluted is a preschooler’s world?
Preliminary data from a new study show that children may ingest traces of atrazine, a common herbicide, in their drinking water.
- Health & Medicine
Puffer Fish Genomes Swim into View
The tightly packed genomes of two puffer fish species have been deciphered.
-
Disabilities develop as family affair
A long-term study uncovered family factors that influence the mental development of children with biologically based disabilities, as well as evidence of increasing stress among parents as their kids with disabilities approach adolescence.
- Astronomy
X-ray study: Energy from a black hole?
Astronomers claim that for the first time, they've observed energy extracted from a black hole, or more precisely, from the tornadolike swirl of surrounding space that a spinning black hole drags along with it.
- Health & Medicine
Even high-normal blood pressure is too high
Blood pressure at the high end of what is defined as the normal range is closer to "high" than to "normal" in terms of risk of associated heart disease.
- Animals
Magnetic field tells nightingales to binge
Young birds that have never migrated before may take a cue from the magnetic field to fatten up before trying to fly over the Sahara.
- Earth
Researchers confirm sea change in oceans
A new analysis of ancient seawater shows that the ocean's chemistry has fluctuated over the last half-billion years.
- Tech
Exploding wires open sharp X-ray eye
Using exploding wires to make low-energy X-rays, a novel, high-resolution camera snaps X-ray pictures of millimeter-scale or larger objects—such as full insects—in which features only micrometers across show up throughout the image.
- Health & Medicine
Protein may be target for Crohn’s therapy
A protein called macrophage migration inhibitory factor, or MIF, may play a role in Crohn's disease, a painful gut ailment.
- Health & Medicine
Brain Food
New food labeling will identify foods rich in choline, a nutrient that plays an integral role in learning and brain health.
- Health & Medicine
Attacking Alzheimer’s
Some researchers now suggest that the so-called amyloid hypothesis is overstated and that other entities, including tau tangles, are as important as beta-amyloid in Alzheimer's disease.
