More Stories from the August 11, 2007 issue
- Planetary Science
Deep Impact and Stardust: Still on assignment
Two sturdy NASA spacecraft have new assignments, studying comets and looking for exoplanets.
- Earth
Cholesterol boosts diesel toxicity
Nanoparticles in diesel exhaust can activate genes that worsen cholesterol's damaging effects.
- Animals
Gender bender
Disabling a chemical-sniffing organ crucial for courting behavior makes girl mice act like frisky boys.
- Health & Medicine
CT heart scans: Risk climbs as age at screening falls
CT scans are increasingly used to investigate heart blockages, but their X rays can increase cancer risk.
- Materials Science
Pliable carbon
The layers of carbon atoms that form graphite can be assembled into strong but flexible "graphene paper."
- Astronomy
Veiled black holes
Many X ray sources in the sky could be active galactic nuclei smothered by gas and dust that blocks their emission of visible and ultraviolet light.
- Earth
Beware summer radon-test results
Measuring household radon levels in summer may give misleadingly low results.
- Health & Medicine
Serotonin lower in shift workers
Workers who rotate between day and night shifts have less of the brain chemical serotonin than day shift workers do.
- Health & Medicine
Skeletal Discovery: Bone cells affect metabolism
A protein made by bone cells has a surprising influence on energy metabolism, and could have a role in treating diabetes.
- Animals
Ferrets Gone Wild: Reintroduced animals coming back in Wyoming
A Wyoming population of endangered black-footed ferrets, started from captive-bred animals, has survived difficulties and is doing well.
- Earth
Bad for Baby: New risks found for plastic constituent
Early exposure to bisphenol A, a building block of polycarbonate plastics, can trigger a variety of later health problems.
- Health & Medicine
Nerve Link: Alzheimer’s suspect shows up in glaucoma
Amyloid-beta, the protein fragment implicated in Alzheimer's disease, may also play a role in glaucoma.
- Earth
Drug Overflow: Pharmaceutical factories foul waters in India
A treatment plant in India that processes waste from drug factories feeds enormous amounts of antibiotics and other drugs into local waterways.
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Bad News, Good News: ADHD-risk gene has silver lining
A gene variant that increases the risk for attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder in young children also helps the problem resolve by the teen years.
- Physics
Newton’s Dusty Mirror: Old experiment inspires ultrafast imaging
An experiment devised by Isaac Newton inspires a modern successor, in which X rays capture the image of a microscopic explosion.
- Health & Medicine
Taking a Jab at Cancer
Vaccines that train a person's immune system to kill cancerous cells, when combined with drugs that block tumor defense mechanisms, are starting to show promise.
- Earth
Hammered Saws
Sawfish, shark relatives that almost went extinct several decades ago, have now gained protection by international treaty.
- Humans
Letters from the August 11, 2007, issue of Science News
Sum kids While testing was done on 5- or 6-year-old children (“Take a Number: Kids show math insights without instruction,” SN: 6/2/07, p. 341), it would be interesting to see if this intuitive skill persists after these students are exposed to standard mathematical instruction in the higher grades. I suspect that the answer will be […]
