More Stories from the April 22, 2000 issue
- Paleontology
Telltale Dino Heart Hints at Warm Blood
A recently discovered fossil dinosaur heart is more like the heart of birds and mammals than that of crocodiles, providing further evidence that dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded.
- Health & Medicine
Boning up on calcium shouldn’t be sporadic
The gains in bone health can quickly disappear when people stop taking extra calcium.
- Astronomy
Milky Way feasts on its neighbors
Three new studies reveal that Earth's home galaxy indulged in cannibalism to assemble its visible halo, the diffuse distribution of stars that surrounds the dense core and disk of the Milky Way.
- Animals
The truth is, frogs bluff and crabs cheat
Two research teams say they've caught wild animals bluffing, only the second and third examples (outside of primate antics) ever recorded.
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Nerve connections come ready to assemble
Nerve cells seem to package key components of synapses—the specialized complexes than connect the nerve cells—and collectively ship the material to points where these complexes take shape.
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Dementia may travel lonely road in elderly
Social isolation may promote the development of Alzheimer's disease and other brain ailments among elderly people.
- Earth
Impurities clock crystal growth rates
A novel method for measuring tiny amounts of hydrogen-containing impurities allows researchers to determine growth rates along different directions in a quartz crystal.
- Health & Medicine
Breast cancer options made clearer
An inexpensive test for two proteins in the blood can indicate whether women with breast cancer that hasn't yet spread to lymph nodes are likely to face such a relapse after surgery.
- Health & Medicine
High estrogen linked to lung cancer
Estrogen receptors proliferating on tumor cells in women's lungs may account for why women seem more easily affected by the carcinogenic effects of tobacco smoke.
- Health & Medicine
Getting melanoma chemotherapy to work
A drug that turns off a gene that blocks the action of chemotherapy in melanoma shows promise against this lethal skin cancer.
- Health & Medicine
Protein predicts prostate cancer spread
Prostate cancer patients who harbor high concentrations of a protein called thymosine beta-15 in their tumors face an increased risk that the cancer will spread.
- Health & Medicine
Chemotherapy baldness thwarted in rats
Scientists studying rats have now developed a medication that wards off chemotherapy-induced baldness.
- Astronomy
Observatory on a suicide mission
Fearing that its 9-year-old workhorse, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, could plunge uncontrollably through the atmosphere if one more of its gyroscopes fails, NASA has decided to crash the spacecraft into the Pacific Ocean in early June.
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The planet that isn’t
An astronomer has formally retracted her claim that she and her colleagues had likely taken the first image of a planet outside the solar system.
- Chemistry
Now, nylon comes in killer colors
Chemists are improving antibacterial fabrics by treating them with compounds that prolong their killing power and add color.
- Health & Medicine
Asthma pressure may shrink airways
Mechanical stress from constricting muscles could cause airway-lining cells to reproduce, eventually thickening the lining and narrowing the air passage.
- Health & Medicine
Loosen Up
Bacterial toxin may lead to less painful treatments for diabetes and brain cancer.
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