Science News / November 18th, 2006

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In This Issue

Sequencing the dead to save the living: Reviving ancient genomes of long-extinct creatures offers a window into past extinctions—and may help prevent future die outs
No gene is an island: Even as biologists catalog the discrete parts of life forms, an emerging picture reveals that life’s functions arise from interconnectedness
The decider: Informing the debate over the reality of ‘free will’ requires learning something about the lateral habenula
This week's table of contents

November 18th, 2006

Ancient Gene Yield: New methods retrieve Neandertals' DNA

Researchers have retrieved and analyzed a huge chunk of Neandertal DNA. (p. 323)
Dark Fingerprints: Hubble sheds light on cosmic expansion

The mysterious cosmic push that's tearing up the universe began revving up about 5 billion years ago. (p. 323)
Unstoppable Bot: Armed with self-scrutiny, a mangled robot moves on

Roboticists have made a walking machine that carries on despite serious damage. (p. 324)
More Evidence of Protection: Circumcision reduces STD risk in men

Circumcised men are less likely to get sexually transmitted diseases than uncircumcised men are. (p. 325)
Cleanup Speedup: Device improves oil-spill recovery

By adding grooves to the surface of a common oil-skimming device, researchers recovered up to three times as much oil as they do with smooth-surfaced devices. (p. 325)
Chicken Speak: Birds pass test for fancy communication

The chicken may be the first animal other than primates that's been shown to make sounds that, like words, represent something in the environment. With audio. (p. 325)
Derailing a Disease: Stem cells slow dogs' muscular dystrophy

Injecting a special type of stem cell into dogs with the canine equivalent of Duchenne muscular dystrophy significantly slowed the disease's progression. (p. 326)
Dashing Rogues

Rogue waves, which tower over the waves that surround them, are probably more common than scientists had previously suspected. (p. 328)
Evolution's Mystery Woman

A heated debate has broken out among anthropologists over whether a highly publicized partial skeleton initially attributed to a new, tiny species of human cousins actually comes from a pygmy Homo sapiens with a developmental disorder. (p. 330)
The African source of the Amazon's fertilizer

More than half of the airborne dust that provides vital nutrients to the Amazonian rainforest comes from a small corner of the Sahara. (p. 333)
Were Viking landers blind to life?

The Viking landers may have missed potential signs of life when they explored Mars in 1976. (p. 333)
Farm salmon spread deadly lice

In the Pacific Northwest, sea lice that spread from cultivated salmon to their wild counterparts have become major parasites affecting the wild population. (p. 333)
Black hole survey

Scanning the sky for high-energy X rays, a NASA satellite found more than 200 supermassive black holes within 400 million light-years of Earth. (p. 333)
Asian amber yields oldest known bee

A tiny chunk of amber from Southeast Asia contains the remains of a bee that's at least 35 million years older than any reported fossil of similar bees. (p. 334)
Nearest extrasolar planet

Astronomers have confirmed the existence of the nearest known planet beyond the solar system. (p. 334)
Revving up recall while fast asleep

Scientists have discovered a way to give memory a modest lift while people slumber. (p. 334)
Hey, that's me!

A test with a jumbo-size mirror suggests that Asian elephants may be among the few species that can recognize their own images. (p. 334)
Letters from the November 18, 2006, issue of Science News

(p. 335)

Blogs:

Science & the Public Is Your Fish Oil Polluted?
By Janet Raloff Nov 20th 2008

Columns:

Comment Debates over definition of planet continue and inspire
By Alan Stern Nov 21st 2008

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

Bulletin Board: