Sources:

Is Earth Pelted by Space Snowballs?

A NASA satellite has captured evidence of house-sized comets smashing into Earth's atmosphere.

Sources:

Louis A. Frank
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Iowa
203 Van Allen Hall
Iowa City, IA 52242-1479

Spanish fossils enter human ancestry fray

Fossils about 800,000 years old have been assigned to a new Homo species, which may have been the last common ancestor of modern humans and Neandertals.

Sources:

Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro
Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas
Departamento de Paleobiologia
J. Gutierrez Abascal 2
28006 Madrid
Spain

John J. Shea
Department of Anthropology
State University of New York
Stony Brook, NY 11794

Erik Trinkaus
Department of Anthropology
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131

Enzyme rare in adults may signal cancers

Telomerase, an enzyme rarely seen in the healthy human body, may be a warning sign of cancer.

Sources:

Satoru Kyo
School of Medicine
Kanazawa University
13-1 Takaramachi, Kanazawa
Ishikawa 920
Japan

Markus Muller
Freie University
Berlin
Germany

Osamu Yoshida
Department of Urology
Kyoto University
54 Kawahara-cho
Shogoin, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606
Japan

Where there's smoke, there's germination

Trace nitrogen gases in smoke trigger germination of wildflower seeds in fire-prone chaparral.

Sources:

Jon E. Keeley
Department of Biology
Occidental College
Los Angeles, CA 90041

DNA doubles in a four-stranded huddle

Two closed loops of single-stranded DNA can form a novel, four-stranded structure.

Sources:

Harold R. Powell
University Library
West Road
Cambridge CB3 9DR
United Kingdom
E-mail: hrp1000@cus.cam.ac.uk
Website: http://harry.ch.cam.ac.uk/~harry/

Stephen A. Salisbury
Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre
12 Union Road
Cambridge CB2 1EZ
United Kingdom
E-mail: sas1@chemcrys.cam.ac.uk

Nadrian C. Seeman
Department of Chemistry
New York University
New York, NY 10003
E-mail: ned.seeman@nyu.edu

A giant step toward creating better fats

Engineering novel enzymes may lead to crops that manufacture low-fat margarines and nylon feedstocks.

Sources:

John Browse
Institute of Biological Chemistry
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-6340

Edgar B. Cahoon
Biology Department
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Upton, NY 11973

Tony Kinney
Dupont Experimental Station
P.O. Box 80402
Wilmington, DE 19880-0402

John Shanklin
Biology Department
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Upton, NY 11973

News flash! A bust goes the distance

After 25 years of debating whether gamma-ray bursts come from within our galaxy, astronomers have evidence that one of these energetic flashes originated outside the Milky Way.

Sources:

Mark R. Metzger
Department of Astronomy
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA 91125

Research Notes:

Biomedicine

Fidgety babies equals healthy babies

Videotaping the movements of premature babies indicate whether they have brain damage.

Betel nuts tasting a bit metallic?

Betel nuts contain copper, which may lead to mouth cancer in people chew them.

New cold sore cream on the market

The antiviral cream penciclovir speeds healing of cold sores.

Earth Science

Making a prisoner out of methane

Oceanographers for the first time fabricated an elusive form of solid methane in its natural environment.

Sources:

Peter G. Brewer
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Moss Landing, CA 95039

Earth's temperature grows more uniform

The temperature difference between the tropics and poles has decreased over the last century.

Sources:

Alix I. Gitelman
Department of Statistics
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Material Science

A magnet for a future atom smasher

Scientists have constructed the strongest dipole magnet, which may one day be used in a high-energy particle accelerator.

Sources:

Ronald Scanlan
Mail Stop 46-161
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
One Cyclotron Road
Berkeley, CA 94720
E-mail: rmscanlan@lbl.gov

Stresses and strains on diamond

Diamond, long thought to be rigid, can bend a surprising amount under very high pressures.

Sources:

Russell J. Hemley
Geophysical Laboratory
Carnegie Institution of Washington
5251 Broad Branch Road, N.W.
Washington, DC 20015-1305
E-mail: hemley@gl.ciw.edu

Mathematics

Assessing irrational irregularity

A novel measure of irregularity indicates that the digits of pi are closer to being randomly distributed than those of other irrational numbers, such as the square root of 3.

Sources:

Steve Pincus
990 Moose Hill Road
Guilford, CT 06437

Cracking a record number

A worldwide effort determined the two prime factors of a 167-digit number, setting a record for the largest number yet factored.

Sources:

Samuel Wagstaff
Department of Computer Science
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN 47907-1398

Articles:

Is Science Talent Squandered?

How future scientists can come undone

A dry experience with science in the first years of college saps the interest of many talented would-be scientists.

Sources:

Elaine Seymour
Bureau of Sociological Research
Ethnography and Evaluation Research
Box 580
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309

Rena Subotnik
Hunter College-Educational Foundations
695 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021
rsubotni@shiva.hunter.cuny.edu

Sphinx of Fats

Some lipids, wallflowers for a century, show therapeutic promise

A ubiquitous but little known family of fats appears to help fight disease.

Sources:

Robert M. Bell
Glaxo-Wellcome
5 Moore Drive
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

Yusuf A. Hannun
P.O. Box 3355
Duke University Medical Center
Durham, NC 27710

Alfred H. Merrill, Jr.
Department of Biochemistry
Emory University School of Medicine
Atlanta, GA 30322-3050
E-mail: amerril@emory.edu

Frances M. Platt
Glycobiology Institute
Department of Biochemistry
University of Oxford
South Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3QU
United Kingdom

Ronald T. Riley
Toxicology and Mycotoxin Research Unit
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Agricultural Research Service
R.B. Russell Agricultural Research Center
P.O. Box 5677
Athens, GA 30604-5677
E-mail: rriley@asrr.arsusda.gov

Frank Ross
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
U.S. Department of Agriculture
P.O. Box 844
Ames, IA 50010

James A. Shayman
Nephrology Division
Department of Internal Medicine
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0676