More Stories from the September 23, 2000 issue
- Physics
Most-Wanted Particle Appears, Perhaps
Hints of the Higgs boson—the crucial and last undetected fundamental particle predicted by the central theory of particle physics—have cropped up at a particle collider in Switzerland just as the machine is slated to be dismantled to make room for a more powerful collider.
- Health & Medicine
Cells profilerate in magnetic fields
Magnetic fields such as those found within a few feet of outdoor electric-power lines could make cells that are vulnerable to cancer behave like tumors.
- Materials Science
Titanium makes move toward mainstream
Inventors of a new process for producing titanium claim that their method can reduce the metal's cost to one-third its current price.
- Health & Medicine
Nerves in heart show damage in Parkinson’s
Some patients with Parkinson's disease also have destruction of nerve terminals in the heart that affects blood pressure.
- Health & Medicine
Fighting cancer from the cabbage patch
Extracts of foods belonging to the cabbage family can block the action of estrogen, a hormone that fuels many cancers.
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The brain spreads its sights in the deaf
Altered brain activity in deaf people may strengthen their peripheral vision.
- Animals
Snapping shrimp whip up a riot of bubbles
High-speed video and fancy math demonstrate that snapping shrimp make so much noise by popping bubbles.
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Hormone dulls a tongue’s taste for sweets
The hormone leptin may suppress the tongue's ability to taste sugary substances.
- Astronomy
Spirograph in the sky
Some 2,000 light-years from Earth, an elderly star has ejected its outer layers to form a puffy, gaseous cocoon that resembles a "spirograph" pattern.
- Astronomy
Magnetic-mapping mission resurrected
The European Space Agency successfully launched Cluster II, a group of four spacecraft that will fly in tandem to generate a three-dimensional map of Earth's magnetosphere.
- Astronomy
Ulysses makes a return trip
Just as the sun has reached the stormy peak of its 11-year activity cycle, the European Space Agency's Ulysses spacecraft has begun its second and final pass over the sun's poles.
- Health & Medicine
Stem-cell transplant works on lupus
Severe lupus can be reversed with a transplant of the patient's own bone marrow stem cells, after they're allowed to mature outside the body, and medication that neutralizes self-attacking immune cells.
- Health & Medicine
Old polio vaccine free of HIV, SIV
Three laboratories analyzing remaining samples of polio vaccine used in the late 1950s find that none contains any human or simian immunodeficiency virus, or chimpanzee DNA—making polio vaccine unlikely to be the cause of the initial HIV outbreak in central Africa.
- Earth
Strange crystal birth found in mine
Deep in a Wisconsin mine, researchers have uncovered a new way for crystals to grow in nature.
- Earth
A late arrival for platinum and gold?
An extraterrestrial source may explain why Earth's mantle holds more platinum, gold, and certain other elements than it should.
- Physics
Electrons get a crack at the nucleus
As long suspected but never before shown, electrons orbiting an atom can directly excite the atom's nucleus.
- Physics
Hydrogen hoops give superfluid clues
Tiny rings of hydrogen molecules show signs of possible superfluid behavior, suggesting that helium might not be the only superfluid after all.
- Math
Unlocking Puzzling Polygons
Proof settles a wickedly prickly question about unfurling crinkly polygons.
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Snap, Crackle, and Feel Good?
Magnetic fields that map the brain may also treat its disorders.
