More Stories from the October 15, 2005 issue
- Anthropology
Wild gorillas take time for tool use
Gorillas that balance on walking sticks and trudge across makeshift bridges have provided the first evidence of tool use among these creatures in the wild.
- Health & Medicine
Vitamin C may treat cancer after all
Vitamin C may be an effective cancer fighter when taken intravenously in high doses.
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Dutch elm fungus turns tree into lure
The fungus that causes Dutch elm disease makes an infected tree strengthen its odors, attracting beetles that carry the fungus on to the next tree.
- Animals
Baited camera snaps first live giant squid
For the first time, researchers have photographed a living giant squid in the wild.
- Earth
The browning of Europe
The lengthy heat wave and drought that struck Europe in the summer of 2003 stifled the growth of vegetation and thereby reduced the amount of carbon dioxide that the continent's plants extracted from the atmosphere.
- Planetary Science
Mission to the outer limits
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has taken up temporary residence at the Kennedy Space Center, where engineers are doing final testing before the craft begins its 9-year voyage to the outer solar system.
- Materials Science
Filling in the blanks
Scientists have added precision to a patterning technique called microcontact printing.
- Paleontology
Raptor Line: Fossil finds push back dinosaur ancestry
Fossils of a newly discovered raptor dinosaur species suggest that the reptile's lineage is older and more widespread than previously suspected.
- Health & Medicine
Vaccine Clears Major Hurdle: Injections offer new tool against cervical cancers
An experimental vaccine against the virus that causes most cancers of the cervix has passed a test typically needed for regulatory approval.
- Tech
Road Warriors: Robotic vehicles triumph over desert obstacles
In a landmark contest that has spurred advances in robotic-vehicle technology, five driverless racing machines piloted themselves over more than 200 kilometers of rugged desert terrain.
- Earth
Drought’s heat killed Southwest’s piñon forests
The heat accompanying a drought and a plague of bark beetles seem to explain the deaths of swathes of piñon pine trees across the Southwest in 2002 and 2003.
- Anthropology
Encore for Evolutionary Small-Timers: Tiny human cousins get younger with new finds
Excavations in an Indonesian cave have yielded more fossils of short, upright creatures that lived as recently as 12,000 years ago.
- Chemistry
Chemical Dancing: Chemists choreograph molecular moves for Nobel honor
This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to three scientists for their work on a versatile strategy for synthesizing all manner of chemical compounds in an environmentally friendly way.
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High Times for Brain Growth: Marijuana-like drug multiplies neurons
A drug that functions as concentrated marijuana does may spur the process by which the brain gives birth to new nerve cells.
- Animals
Proxy Vampire: Spider eats blood by catching mosquitoes
Researchers studying food preferences among spiders report finding the first one with a taste for vertebrate blood.
- Humans
A Galling Business
Efforts are under way to halt both poaching and inhumane farming of bears to supply bile, an ingredient used in traditional Asian medicine.
- Earth
Invisible Rivers
The fresh water that seeps from continents into coastal waters via submarine springs is a phenomenon that many scientists are just beginning to appreciate, model, and accurately measure.
- Humans
Letters from the October 15, 2005, issue of Science News
Sun, sky, or slather? “Sun Struck: Data suggest skin cancer epidemic looms” (SN: 8/13/05, p. 99) gives the impression that the increase in skin cancer among young people is caused by tanning in the sun. Environmental factors such as ozone depletion should have at least been referenced in the article. Cathy Hodge McCoidSacramento, Calif. In […]
