Infernal Inner World July 25, 1998 | Volume 154 | Number 4 Cover: Using earthquake waves to probe the center of the planet, seismologists are discovering mysteries in Earth's solid iron heart. (Composite: Mark Gilvey/Design Imaging)

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News of the Week:

Two large studies find that a vaccine against Lyme disease vaccine can protect people against the tickborne disease, particularly after a booster shot is given.

Sizzling June fires up greenhouse debate

As extreme temperatures set records, the political fight over global warming continues.

 

Infants as young as 3 months old can learn and remember the order of mobiles viewed one after the other, a finding that contradicts previous studies on serially presented lists.

 

A tiny, silver spider discovered in Taiwan eats pieces of other spiders' handiwork.

 

After 20 years of trying, physicists have supercooled hydrogen into a Bose-Einstein condensate, in which all atoms are in the same quantum-mechanical state.

 

Muscle cells in damaged hearts may divide

A finding that human heart muscle cells can divide may help researchers discover how to regenerate tissue damaged by heart attacks.

 

Irradiation appears to offer a way to keep water spinach, a black-market Asian delicacy, from taking root as a nuisance plant in U.S. waters.

 

New observations suggest that the bulk of the stars may have formed when the universe was just a few billion years old.

 

Researchers disagree on whether a specific gene on chromosome 12 influences a person's chance of getting Alzheimer’s disease late in life.

Brain images suggest that memory problems in schizophrenia stem from disturbances in areas that facilitate conscious recall and information retrieval.

 

Tracing the brain’s reading network

The reading order dyslexia may reflect an inability of a brain area known as the angular gyrus to work in concert with regions involved in speech comprehension.

 

Atomic-scale pictures of an HIV protein reveal how the virus infects cells and eludes the immune system.

 

The intestinal beat goes on

Cells in the intestine drive the organ’s rhythmic contractions.

 

Astronomy

Astronomers have found a near-Earth asteroid that may never travel beyond the solar system.

 

Planets are candidates, not finds

Evidence of three planets orbiting nearby stars, described at a recent meeting, is highly preliminary, caution members of the team that presented the data.

 

Unlike bulk-metal conductors, single-atom electric contacts conduct electricity according to their individual chemical identities.

 

Foiling friction by jiggling a junction

Troublesome friction on the scale of microscopic machines nearly vanishes when lubricated surfaces are gently vibrated.

Roughly the size of the moon, the inner core spins measurably faster than the rest of the planet and its hemispheres appear dissimilar.

 

The Overworked Heart

Identifying proteins and enzymes implicated in heart damage may lead to ways of preventing or even reversing congestive heart disease.