Science News / February 14th, 2004

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In This Issue

Silk: Mimicking how spiders make their complex array of silks could usher in a tapestry of new materials, and other animals or plants could be designed to be the producers
Itch: Scientists trace a new path behind the maddening, unrelenting, screaming desire to scratch
Half-life (more or less): Physicists are stirred by claims that the sun may change what’s unchangeable—the rate of radioactive decay
This week's table of contents

February 14th, 2004

Tailoring Therapies: Cloned human embryo provides stem cells

Scientists have for the first time carried test-tube cloning of a human embryo to the stage at which it can yield stem cells. (p. 99)
Snappy DNA: Long strand folds into octahedron

By harnessing the self-assembling properties of DNA, researchers coerced a single strand of the genetic material to assume the shape of an octahedron. (p. 99)
Early Flight? Winged insects appear surprisingly ancient

New analyses of a fossil suggest that winged insects may have emerged as early as 400 million years ago. (p. 100)
Pregnancy Alert: Proteins may predict preeclampsia

Blood concentrations of two proteins that affect blood vessel growth appear to foretell the pregnancy condition known as preeclampsia. (p. 100)
Some Primates' Sheltered Lives: Baboons, chimps enter the realm of cave

In separate studies, researchers have gathered the first systematic evidence showing that baboons and chimpanzees regularly use caves, a behavior many anthropologists have attributed only to people and our direct ancestors. (p. 101)
Flesh Eaters: Bees that strip carrion also take wasp young

A South American bee that ignores flowers and collects carrion from carcasses has an unexpected taste for live, abandoned wasp young. (p. 101)
Candy Science: M&Ms pack more tightly than spheres

Squashed or stretched versions of spheres snuggle together more tightly than randomly packed spheres do. (p. 102)
Where'd I Put That?

Birds that hide and recover thousands of separate caches of seeds have become a model for investigating how animals' minds work. (p. 103)
Code Breakers

Chemical tags applied to proteins that DNA wraps around regulate genetic activity. (p. 106)
Diagnosing the Developing World

Researchers are learning how to adapt sophisticated technologies to meet the health-care needs of the developing world. (p. 108)
Bacteria do the twist

A newly identified bacterial protein generates the sinuous shapes of some bacteria. (p. 109)
Poof goes an atmosphere

Blasted by the heat and radiation from its parent star, a planet 150 light-years from Earth is literally blowing off its atmosphere. (p. 109)
Monkeys heed neural calls of the wild

A part of the brain that's involved in sound processing shows pronounced activity when rhesus monkeys hear their comrades vocalizing but not when the same animals hear other sounds. (p. 109)
Virus might explain respiratory ailments

Human metapneumovirus, first isolated in 2001, is present in many respiratory infections that had previously gone unexplained. (p. 109)
How blind mole rats find their way home

The blind mole rat is the first animal discovered to navigate by combining dead reckoning with a magnetic compass. (p. 110)
Ancient whalers altered arctic lakes

Analyses of sediment and water samples taken from an arctic lake indicate that an ancient whaling community left a mark on the lake’s ecosystem that persists today, even though the settlement was abandoned more than 400 years ago. (p. 110)
European find gets Stone Age date

A new radiocarbon analysis indicates that a skeleton found more than a century ago in an Italian cave dates to around 26,400 to 23,200 years ago. (p. 110)
Letters from the Feb. 14, 2004, issue of Science News

(p. 111)

Blogs:

Science & the Public By Janet Raloff Nov 20th 2008

Columns:

Math Trek By Julie Rehmeyer
Mathematicians develop computer proof-checking systems in order to realize century-old dreams of fully precise, accurate mathematics. Nov 14th 2008

Comment By Guest Columnists Nov 7th 2008

Bulletin Board:

Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting

Enceladus South Pole

Unknotting Knot Theory

New Lead Risks

SN Bookshelf:

Book Review: The Princeton Companion to Mathematics, Timothy Gowers, ed
Review by Tom Siegfried
Buy now | More Books

All in a Day’s Work: Careers Using Science by Megan Sullivan
NSTA Press, 2008, 140 p., $15.95.
Buy now | More Books

Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat— And How to Counter It by Wallace S. Broecker and Robert Kunzig
Hill and Wang, 2008, 253 p., $25.
Buy now | More Books