Sources:

Milky Way's Heart Gushes Antimatter

The heart of our galaxy pumps a fountain of antimatter and hot gas into the tenuous halo of material lying several thousand light-years above it.

Sources:

Charles D. Dermer
Naval Research Laboratory
Washington, DC 20375-5352

FDA can regulate tobacco as a device

Although the government can regulate tobacco products to keep them out of the hands of children, it cannot restrict advertising, according to a landmark court ruling.

Sources:

Jack E. Henningfield
Johns Hopkins University
Bayview Medical Center
5510 Nathan Shock Drive
Baltimore, MD 21224

John R. Hughes
Human Behavior and Pharmacology Laboratory
Department of Psychiatry
University of Vermont
38 Fletcher Place
Burlington, VT 05401

Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco
103 S. Adams Street
Rockville, MD 20850
E-mail: srnt7680@aol.com
Website: http://www.ahsc.arizona.edu/srnt/srnt.html

Tobacco Control Archives
Galen II
Digital Library of the University of California and Center for Knowledge Management
San Francisco, CA
E-mail: tobacco-info@library.ucsf.edu
Website: http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/index.html

U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Office of Consumer Affairs
5600 Fishers Lane
Rockville, MD 20857
Website: http://www.os.dhhs.gov or http://www.fda.gov/opacom/campaigns/tobacco

Exercise helps some cancer, heart patients

Physical activity boosts the health of people with congestive heart failure and those recovering from chemotherapy.

Sources:

Bernard Chaitman
Chief of Cardiology
Saint Louis University
Health Sciences Center
3635 Vista Avenue at Grand Boulevard
P.O. Box 15250
St. Louis, MO 63110-0250

Jonathan Myers
Cardiology 111C
Veterans Administration Healthcare System
3801 Miranda Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94304

Gene may further obsessions, compulsions

A gene inherited from both parents appears to contribute to a susceptibility to obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Sources:

Maria Karayiorgou
Rockefeller University
1230 York Avenue
Box 313
New York, NY 10021

James F. Leckman
Child Study Center
Yale University School of Medicine
P.O. Box 3333
I-269SHM
New Haven, CT 06510

Chemical weapons treaty sets deadline

The U.S. must dispose of its 30,000 tons of chemical weapons by 2007, according to an international treaty that was ratified last week, and alternatives to incineration are being sought.

Sources:

Mickey Morales
Public Outreach Office
Building E4585, PMCD
Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 21010-5401
Website: http://www-pmcd.apgea.army.mil

Donald L. Siebenaler
Committee on Review and Evaluation of the Army Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program
Board on Army Science and Technology
National Research Council
2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20418

Amy E. Smithson
Henry L. Stimson Center
21 Dupont Circle, N.W.
Fifth Floor
Washington, DC 20036
E-mail: asmithson@stimson.org
Website: http://www.stimson.org/pub/stimson/cwc/

Craig Williams
Chemical Weapons Working Group
P.O. Box 467
Berea, KY 40403
E-mail: kefwilli@acs.eku.edu

Tying physical theory into stable knots

Theorists have for the first time discovered a way to generate stable knotlike structures as solutions of the equations of field theory, which is widely used to describe many kinds of physical systems.

Sources:

Antti J. Niemi
Department of Theoretical Physics
Uppsala University
P.O. Box 803, S-75108
Uppsala
Sweden

Warren Perkins
Department of Physics
University of Wales at Swansea
Singleton Park
Swansea as2 8PP
United Kingdom

Paleontologists deplume feathery dinosaur

A famous Chinese dinosaur fossil does not appear to have feathers, as had been previously reported.

Sources:

David Bubier
Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19103-1195

Larry Martin
Natural History Museum
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS 66045-2124

John Ostrom
Yale University
Peabody Museum of Natural History
170 Whitney Avenue
Box 6666
New Haven, CT 06511-8161

Hormone may directly trim fat from cells

Leptin, a hormone secreted by fat cells, appears to reduce the amount of fat stored in cells, an effect which may offer protection against some forms of diabates.

Sources:

Roger H. Unger
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
5323 Harry Hines Boulevard
Dallas, TX 75235

Research Notes:

Astronomy

More Hubble trouble

One of three infrared detectors installed on the Hubble Space Telescope during last February's repair mission is out of focus, and all three devices may function for only half of their expected 5-year lifetime.

Sources:

Marcia J. Rieke
Steward Observatory
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85715

A new tail for Comet Hale-Bopp

As it fades from view, Comet Hale-Bopp has surprised astronomers with a tail of sodium atoms.

Sources:

Michael R. Combi
Space Physics Research Laboratory
University of Michigan
2455 Hayward Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2143

Biomedicine

Early puberty turns girls into women

Girls in the United States mature sexually earlier than expected, with blacks entering puberty well ahead of whites.

Sources:

Marcia E. Herman-Giddens
Office of the Chief Medical Examiner
CB#7580
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, N.C. 27599-7580

Psoriasis balm boosts melanoma risk

One of the most effective remedies for psoriasis appears to increase the risk of lethal melanoma in individuals who have repeated treatments over more than a decade.

Sources:

Robert Stern
Department of Dermatology
Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center
330 Brookline Avenue
Boston, MA 02215

Nutrition

The cost of too little magnesium

Not eating enough magnesium can make physically taxing tasks all the harder.

Sources:

Henry C. Lukaski
USDA-ARS
Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center
Box 9034
Grand Forks, ND 58201-8495

Fussy baby? Maybe it's the juice

Infants can't efficiently digest some of the sugars in fruit juices.

Sources:

Conrad Cole
Department of Pediatrics
Maimonides Medical Center
4802 10th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11219

Physics

First data from new neutrino detector

Preliminary results from the new Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector confirm that the number of solar neutrinos detected on Earth falls significantly short of the number predicted by conventional theory.

Sources:

Kenneth K. Young
Department of Physics
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-1207

Subatomic scrutiny from Jefferson Lab

Physicists have obtained the first results from high-speed collisions between electrons and other particles at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility.

Sources:

Larry Cardman
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
Hampton Roads
12000 Jefferson Avenue
Newport News, VA 23606

Speed of sound in frigid sodium cloud.

Researchers have measured the speed of sound in a Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium atoms.

Sources:

Wolfgang Ketterle
Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139

Articles:

Diverse Strategies to Vanquish Cancer

Researchers take aim at malignancy

Using molecular biology as a tool, researchers attack a variety of cancers.

Sources:

Howard Fine
Division of Cancer Pharmacology
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
44 Binney Street
Boston, MA 02115

Christopher Maack
ONYX Pharmaceuticals
3031 Research Drive
Building A
Richmond, CA 94806

Allen Oliff
Merck Research Laboratories
Attn: WP16-101
Sumney Town Pike
West Point, PA 19486

Everybody's Talkin'

Language's great innate debate continues to make noise

Whether children learn to speak via intrinsic grammar circuits in the brain or to general learning capacities that feed off exposure to one's native language remains a topic of discussion.

Sources:

Jeffrey Elman
Department of Cognitive Science
University of California
San Diego, CA 92093

Steven Pinker
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
E10-016
Cambridge, MA 02146

Alan Prince
Department of Linguistics
Rutgers University
18 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08903

Jenny R. Saffran
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627

Mark S. Seidenberg
Neuroscience Program
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-2520

Paul Smolensky
Department of Cognitive Science
Johns Hopkins University
3400 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218-2685

Michael Ullman
Institute for Cognitive and Computational Sciences
Georgetown University
3970 Reservoir Road, N.W.
Washington, DC 20007