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Art Most Ancient
December 19 & 26, 1998 | Volume 154 | Number 25
& 26
Cover: A pattern of curving folds suggesting fingerprints
adorns the surface of a 140-million-year-old limestone slab from southern Germany, shown
here in a cast of the original. As part of the exhibit "Fossil Art," such
pieces straddle the divide separating art from science. (Photo: William K. Sacco, Peabody
Museum of Natural History)
 Science News of the Year: 1998
Fossil Art Contest: Name Nature's Masterpieces
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News of the Week:
New Gene Therapy Fights Frailty
Gene therapy in animals
successfully halted age-related muscle loss, pointing a way to a treatment for people.
Fishing trawlers scrape rock bottom
Marine researchers now
say that fishing trawlers destroy an area twice the size of the contiguous United States
every year, but it’s still unclear how long it takes seafloor communities to recover.
Cosmic lenses magnify distant galaxies
Magnified by
gravitational lenses, 15 newly discovered distant galaxies loom larger and brighter than
the rest.
Ancient ancestor reveals skeletal stamina
Scientists announced the
discovery of a nearly complete skeleton of an early member of the human evolutionary
family, dating to more than 3 million years ago.
Potent laser twirls electron figure eights
Blasting electrons with
ultrahigh-power lasers forces the particles to move in figure eights—a predicted
consequence of Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Sleeping birds might be proofing songs
Part of the song
machinery in a bird’s brain gets more sensitive to sounds when the bird falls asleep,
possibly reviewing the day’s music silently.
Do HIV-infected blobs run amok in AIDS?
HIV infection causes some
immune-system cells to fuse into huge blobs that may cause damage within the body.
Tumors often have phony protein receptor
Tumor tissue often has a
membrane molecule that prevents the cells from responding to a signal that thwarts
initiating programmed cell death, and thus the cancerous cell survives and replicates.
Behavior
Stressful aftermath of early losses
College students who had
lost a parent to death or had grown up feeling emotionally separated from their parents
exhibited especially elevated blood pressure and hormonal responses to stress later in
life.
Antipsychotics and brain changes
Antipsychotic drugs may
cause some of the brain abnormalities noted in patients suffering from schizophrenia.
Earth Science
Central U.S. quake threat debated
The earthquake risk of
the central United States may not be as high as feared.
The swell side of El Niņo
El Niņo caused a
temporary but dramatic rise in global sea levels.
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Is cosmology solved?
Astronomers recently
debated whether the discoveries made during the past few years, such as evidence that the
universe's expansion is accelerating, constitute a breakthrough in the understanding of
the cosmos.
Tubular Science
Tune in for previews of hot new TV science shows!
Television science programs receive a humorous and entirely
imaginary send-up.
A Billion Years of Beauty
Exhibit of fossils strains the definition of art
A collection of geological designs straddles the divide separating art from
science.
Fossil Art Contest: Name Nature's Masterpieces
