More Stories from the November 9, 2002 issue
- Earth
Wildfire Below: Smoldering peat disgorges huge volumes of carbon
Set alight by wildfires, thick beds of decaying tropical plant matter can pump massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, rivaling those produced globally each year from the combustion of fossil fuels.
- Tech
Nanotech Switch: Strategy controls minuscule motor
Researchers have modified a rotating protein fragment so that it starts and stops spinning with the addition and removal of zinc.
- Astronomy
Neutron Star Stuff: Just neutrons, no quarks
A new study suggests that although neutron stars may be weird, they’re not strange.
- Health & Medicine
Coconspirator? Genital herpes linked to cervical cancer
Having a genital herpes infection doubles the risk of cervical cancer among women who have human papillomavirus.
- Animals
Lizard’s Choice: Mating test pits physique versus domain
When she decides to move in, is it him or is it his real estate?
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Eye-Grabbing Insights: Visual structure grips infants’ attention
Babies take their first major strides with their eyes, not their legs, as they rapidly distinguish among playpens, pacifiers, and a plethora of other objects.
- Health & Medicine
First Line of Defense: Hints of primitive antibodies
After looking in primitive marine invertebrates that are considered to be close relatives to vertebrates, immunologists find families of genes that might provide clues as to how early immune systems evolved.
- Health & Medicine
Schizophrenia spurs imaging network
Thanks to a federal grant, a team of researchers will establish a national database of brain images that will allow for expanded investigations of the neural basis of schizophrenia.
- Astronomy
Cosmic rays from the solar system
Dust grains from the Kuiper belt, a storehouse of comets and other frozen bodies in the outer solar system, are the source of some of the lower energy cosmic rays that bombard Earth.
- Astronomy
Milky Way black hole gets real
Tracing the path of a star orbiting near the center of our galaxy, astronomers have found the best evidence to date that a supermassive black hole lies at the Milky Way’s core.
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Memory grows up in 1-year-olds
As children enter the second year of life, they exhibit a marked improvement in recalling simple events after a 4-month delay, perhaps reflecting the growth of memory-related brain areas.
- Materials Science
Worm’s teeth conceal odd mineral material
A worm's teeth contain a copper mineral that could serve as a model for new materials.
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- Earth
Weed killer feminizes fish
The weed killer atrazine can turn normally hermaphroditic fish into females, a new study shows.
- Earth
Pesticides block male hormones
Some common pesticides can block the ability of androgens, male sex hormones, to trigger normal gene activities.
- Health & Medicine
Old Drug, New Uses?
A hormone called erythropoietin, long used to treat anemia, also seems to protect against nerve damage and holds promise as a new therapy for stroke and spinal cord injury.
- Astronomy
Jet Astronomy
For the first time, scientists have traced the slowing and dimming of X-ray-emitting jets from a black hole.
