More Stories from the October 11, 2003 issue
- Health & Medicine
Making the heart burn
Burning chest pain during a heart attack may stem from a protein that also responds to chili peppers.
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Rats join the roster of clones
Scientists have finally cloned the rat, setting the stage for the creation of genetically engineered rats that can be used to study many more diseases in humans.
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Mothers reveal their baby faces
Mothers in different cultures use three distinctive facial expressions to communicate with their infants.
- Earth
Weekend weather really is different
Analyses of more than 40 years of weather data from around the world reveal that in some regions the difference between daily high and low temperatures on weekend days varies significantly from that measured on weekdays.
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Faint smells of schizophrenia
A loss of the ability to tell different odors apart may represent an early sign of schizophrenia.
- Health & Medicine
Was President Taft cognitively impaired?
President William Howard Taft apparently had sleep apnea, a breathing disorder that could explain his propensity to nod off.
- Physics
Cassini confirms Einstein’s theory
En route to a 2004 rendezvous with Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft has verified a key prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity to an accuracy 50 times better than that of previous measurements.
- Earth
Scrutinized chemicals linger in atmosphere
The newly determined longevity in the atmosphere of certain perfluorinated chemicals indicates that they may disperse environmental contamination far and wide.
- Astronomy
Super Data: Hail the cosmic revolution
Ten extremely distant supernovas recently discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope provide evidence that something is pushing objects in the cosmos apart at an ever-faster rate.
- Tech
Special Delivery: Metallic nanorods shuttle genes
A new gene therapy technique relies on nanorods made of gold and nickel to deliver genes to cells in the body.
- Animals
Bad Bubbles: Could sonar give whales the bends?
Odd bubbles of fat and gas have turned up in the bodies of marine mammals, raising the question of whether something about human activity in the oceans could give these deep divers decompression sickness.
- Neuroscience
Restoring Recall: Memories may form and reform, with sleep
Two new studies indicate that memories, at least for skills learned in a laboratory, undergo a process of storage and restorage that depends critically on sleep.
- Humans
Nobel prizes go to scientists harnessing odd phenomena
The 2003 Nobel prizes in the sciences were announced early this week.
- Earth
Toxic Controversy: Perchlorate found in milk, but risk is debated
Researchers in Texas have detected the chemical perchlorate in milk, crops, and a significant portion of the state's groundwater.
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Visionary Research
Scientists are debating why primates evolved full color vision and whether that development led to a reduced sense of smell.
- Earth
When Genes Escape
The focus of the debate over transgenic crops has changed from whether genes will escape to what difference it will make when they do.
