More Stories from the September 1, 2001 issue
- Animals
Stinking decorations protect nests
The common waxbill's habit of adorning its nests with fur plucked from carnivore scat turns out to discourage attacks from predators.
- Animals
Oops. New feathers turn out lousy
Going to the trouble of molting doesn't really get rid of a bird's lice after all.
- Animals
When rare species eat endangered ones
To cut down on their salmon smolt catch, Caspian terns were encouraged to move from one island to another in the Columbia River.
- Animals
Big woodpeckers trash others’ homes
Pileated woodpeckers destroy in an afternoon the nesting cavities that take endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers 6 years to excavate.
- Paleontology
That’s no footprint, it’s got no toes
The impressions near Isona, Spain, long thought to be fossilized dinosaur footprints may actually record the feeding behavior of stingrays.
- Paleontology
Completing a titan by getting a head
When paleontologists unearthed the skeleton of a 70-million-year-old titanosaur in Madagascar in the late 1990s, they also recovered something that had been missing from previous such finds: a skull that matched the body.
- Health & Medicine
Stem cell research marches on
Cells from human embryos can be transformed into heart cells or insulin-secreting cells.
- Health & Medicine
Healing the heart from within
An unusual mouse strain can regenerate heart tissue when the organ is damaged.
- Health & Medicine
Insulin lowers more than blood sugar
Insulin may reduce inflammation and protect the heart.
- Paleontology
New fossil sheds light on dinosaurs’ diet
Vestiges of soft tissue preserved in a 70-million-year-old Mongolian fossil suggest that some dinosaurs could have strained small bits of food from the water and mud of streams and ponds, just like some modern aquatic birds do.
- Computing
Computer paints a charged bioportrait
By employing a novel computational strategy, researchers have mapped the electrical landscape of biological molecules made up of more than 1 million atoms.
-
Human Brains May Take Unique Turn
Preliminary evidence indicates that the human brain may undergo a unique form of fetal development that facilitates the growth of brain areas involved in symbolic thought and language.
- Animals
It’s a snake! No, a fish. An octopus?
An as-yet-unnamed species of octopus seems to be protecting itself by impersonating venomous animals from sea snakes to flatfish.
- Health & Medicine
Hindering glutamate slows rat brain cancer
Compounds that inhibit the amino acid glutamate impede a form of brain cancer called glioma in rats.
- Tech
Crystal listens for telltale sounds of virus
Scientists have built a device that can hear the movement of viral particles in fluids.
- Tech
Quantum bell rings to electron beat
A new nanoscale transistor that parcels out electrons with metronome-like regularity has the potential to lead to designs for electronic noses and tiny devices inside of cell phones.
- Health & Medicine
Milk seems to guard against breast cancer
Norwegian scientists have linked high milk consumption to low incidence of breast cancer.
- Tech
The Seeing Tongue
Blind people can now use their tongues to see, albeit crudely, thanks to prototype technology that involves licking arrays of electrodes attached to video cameras.
- Math
Pi à la Mode
A potential link between two disparate mathematical fields—number theory and chaotic dynamics—could lead to a proof that every digit of pi occurs with the same frequency.
