More Stories from the September 4, 2004 issue
- Tech
Sound power for deep-space travel beyond sun’s reach
An unusually efficient new type of power unit for spacecraft uses sound to convert heat to electricity.
- Health & Medicine
Vitamin E may curb colds in old folks
Vitamin E seems to help elderly people fend off colds.
- Tech
Helping circuits get enough oxygen
The search for new insulators needed for making ever-smaller circuits may get a boost from a new electron microscopy technique sensitive to a single oxygen atom missing from a crystal layer.
- Health & Medicine
Mexican Americans face stroke risk
Middle-aged Mexican Americans face twice the stroke risk that non-Hispanic whites do.
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Babies’ sound path to language skills
A test of early speech perception shows promise as a way to identify 6-month-olds headed for language difficulties as toddlers.
- Health & Medicine
Pathogenic partners prompt pneumonia
A study of infants has shown that bacterial and viral pathogens may act together in causing pneumonia, a finding that could affect treatment options.
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A call to arms aids recovery of sight
A man was able to recover some of the sight he lost as a result of brain damage simply by reaching out toward objects near his body, researchers say.
- Animals
Mom bears more sons when she gets extra bouquets
When researchers spiff up a male starling's courtship by delivering some extra bouquets to his mate on his behalf, the couple tends to produce more sons than usual.
- Astronomy
Rocky Road: Planet hunting gets closer to Earth
Astronomers have discovered the three lightest planets known outside the solar system, moving researchers closer to the goal of finding extrasolar planets that resemble Earth.
- Tech
Electrifying Toxic Cleanup: Electrodes could stimulate removal of radioactive waste
Researchers have devised a bioremediation system that electrically stimulates bacteria to break down toxic chemicals in the environment.
- Health & Medicine
Alzheimer’s Advance: Omega-3 fatty acid benefits mice
A diet that includes a key omega-3 fatty acid found in fish prevents some memory loss in mice that develop a disease resembling Alzheimer's.
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Cultured Readers: Chinese kids show new neural side of dyslexia
Brain disturbances that underlie the inability to read a non-alphabetic script, such as Chinese, differ from those already implicated in the impaired reading of alphabetic systems, such as English.
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Cancer Flip-Flop: Gene acts in both proliferation and control of growth
Scientists have identified what might be a new class of cancer-controlling genes that alternates between halting and promoting cancer.
- Health & Medicine
Scanning Risk: Whole-body CT exams may increase cancer
Adults who routinely get whole-body CT scans without medical cause are exposing themselves to doses of radiation that may increase their risk of dying from cancer.
- Tech
Tiny Timepiece: Atomic clock could fit almost anywhere
Physicists have shrunk the high-tech heart of an atomic clock to the size of a rice grain.
- Earth
Paved Paradise?
The precipitation-fed runoff that spills from impervious surfaces such as buildings, roads, and parking lots in developed areas increases erosion in streams, wreaks ecological havoc there, and contributes to urban heat islands.
- Tech
Ocean Envy
By mimicking the flippers of penguins, whales, and dolphins, engineers hope to make ocean vessels that are as maneuverable and efficient as the marine animals.
- Humans
Letters from the September 4, 2004, issue of Science News
Funny pages Horvath and Toffel’s comparison of the environmental impacts of the paper versus the electronic editions of the New York Times is a bit misleading (“Newspaper’s Footprint: Environmental toll of all the news that’s fit to print,” SN: 6/12/04, p. 374: Newspaper’s Footprint: Environmental toll of all the news that’s fit to print). A […]
