More Stories from the May 5, 2001 issue
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Music, language may meet in the brain
Brain areas considered crucial for understanding language may also play an important role in music perception.
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School kids cite widespread bullying
A substantial proportion of children in grades 6 through 10 report bullying other children or being bullied themselves.
- Tech
Stuff gets stiffed by unstiff inserts
In an odd twist, material that is so extremely yielding that it is said to have negative stiffness will make already stiff materials even stiffer when it's blended into them.
- Tech
Electromagnetism acts oddly in device
Without breaking any physical laws, a novel, fiberglass-copper structure affects microwaves so strangely that a beam of radiation passing through it bends at an angle opposite from what it get bent at an angle opposite from what it would have exiting any other known material.
- Materials Science
Novel nanotubes are now made-to-order
Researchers have made nanotubes with specific sizes and traits by designing molecules that self-assemble.
- Chemistry
Rocks May Have Given a Hand to Life
In a new twist to the puzzle of how life developed from only left-handed amino acids, researchers have found that the common mineral calcite can segregate the molecules into their left-handed and right-handed varieties.
- Materials Science
Inorganic tubes get smaller than ever
Researchers have created the smallest stable, freestanding inorganic nanotubes yet.
- Health & Medicine
Epileptic seizures may be predictable
Patterns of mild electrical disturbance in the brains of epilepsy patients appear to foreshadow a seizure hours before its onset.
- Physics
New probe reveals unfamiliar inner proton
Researchers taking one of the closest looks yet into the intact proton have found an unexpectedly complex interior electromagnetic environment.
- Earth
Even low lead in kids has a high IQ cost
Lead can damage a young child's ability to learn and reason at exposures far lower than the limit deemed acceptable by the U.S. government.
- Astronomy
Have scientists seen planets in the making?
Astronomers may finally have glimpsed a key step in the construction of a planet.
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For some birds, Mr. Wrong can be alright
What looks like the ultimate bad choice in romance—a mate from a different species—in some conditions may not be so dumb after all.
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Dolphins may seek selves in mirror images
Dolphins apparently recognize their own reflections.
- Health & Medicine
Peptide puts mouse arthritis out of joint
A compound called vasointestinal peptide, which binds to immune system T cells and macrophages, thwarts arthritis in mice.
- Health & Medicine
Long-term ecstasy use impairs memory
Extended use of the illicit drug called MDMA or ecstasy exacerbated memory problems in users aged 17 to 31, none of whom reported alcohol dependence.
- Health & Medicine
Tamoxifen dilates arteries in men
The breast cancer drug tamoxifen can widen a narrowed coronary artery in men with heart problems.
- Paleontology
The Latest Pisces of an Evolutionary Puzzle
The recent discovery of coelacanths off the northeastern coast of South Africa was the first sighting of the rare fish in that country since the first living coelacanth, a type of fish thought to have been extinct for millions of years, was caught there in late 1938.
- Tech
Getting Nanowired
Makers of nanowires may overcome the limits that loom for microchip fabrication.
