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Higher Primates May Have Asian
Root
The discovery of 40-million-year-old fossil-jaw fragments and teeth adds
to controversial evidence for the Asian origin of higher primates.
Monkeyflowers hint at evolutionary leaps
Monkeyflowers have a few genes that make a huge difference in pollinators’
responses, suggesting that evolution doesn’t have to mince along in baby
steps.
Fertilizer: Hiding a toxic
pollutant?
Whether common fertilizers are tainted with perchlorate, a toxic salt,
remains controversial, despite new EPA tests.
Kuiper belt may hold fragments of Pluto
The solar system’s reservoir of icy comets and other debris may hold
shards left over from the ancient collision that gouged the moon Charon
from Pluto.
Plastic plants may become plastics plants
By transplanting four genes from bacteria, researchers have produced
plants that make a commercial-grade plastic.
Zip Code plan for proteins wins Nobel
The discovery that proteins bear signals directing them to their
destinations within cells earned this year’s Nobel Prize for Physiology
or Medicine.
Physics prize takes another tour de force
Two Dutch physicists share the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics for their 1971
invention of a mathematical method that played a key role in the
development of modern particle physics.
Chemistry Nobel spotlights fast reactions
Ahmed H. Zewail of the California Institute of Technology won the 1999
Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work in observing and studying
chemical reactions at the atomic level.
Built to Scale
Scientists peel back the wrapper on life’s packaging principles
Tackling a long-standing puzzle of life, theorists suggest that rules by
which an organism’s metabolism, lifespan, ecology, and other traits
change with size may be based on the architectures of networks that carry
fluids in plants and animals.
Designer Estrogens
Getting all the benefits, few of the risks
Designer estrogens now being tested may give women the benefits of
hormone-replacement therapy, like increasing bone density and reducing
heart disease, while avoiding the risks, such as breast and endometrial
cancer.
Archaeology
Tool time in the Stone Age
Neandertals pursued a variety of toolmaking approaches in a Spanish cave,
contradicting assumptions that this aptitude originated among modern
humans.
Well-aged slabs of art
The oldest confirmed dates for cave or rock art in southern Africa have
come from 3,600-year-old paint on a pair of buried slabs.
Biomedicine
Car safety tied to vision testing, clarity
Elderly drivers living in states without mandatory vision tests for diver’s
license renewal are more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than
elderly drivers in other states, and elderly people who have cataracts
surgically removed are less likely to get into accidents than elderly
cataract patients who don’t have the surgery.
Photodynamic treatment used on eyes
Age-related wet macular degeneration, a disabling eye disease, can be
treated by an intravenous injection of a dye that when activated by
lasers, attacks rogue blood vessels leaking into the retina.
Mathematics
Optimal paths to atomic clusters
A variant of a standard method for computing a global minimum of geometric
landscapes helped researchers discover a new way of arranging 98 atoms in
a cluster.
Pi by the billions
Yasumasa Kanada and his colleagues have computed 206.2 billion decimal
digits of pi, besting their previous record of 51.5 billion digits.
