More Stories from the August 25, 2001 issue
- Computing
Web worms: Code Red to Warhol
Using an efficient infection strategy, a malicious programmer could deploy a rogue computer program far more voracious than the Code Red worm that struck on July 19.
- Earth
Resetting a clock from Earth’s rocks
Better measurements of one of the rates of radioactive decay used to date extremely old rocks open up the possibility that Earth may have had a crust as many as 200 million years earlier than previously thought.
- Earth
Sahara to get hotter, drier, smaller
By the end of this century, the world's hottest desert will be even hotter, drier, and smaller than it is now, according to an international team of climate modelers.
- Computing
New initiatives scale up supercomputing
Several government efforts aim to give researchers access to computing power in the range of 12 trillion operations per second or more.
- Chemistry
Chemists make molecules with less mess
Researchers have found a way for a widely used, commercially important chemical reaction to produce less pollution.
- Chemistry
Carbon-70 fullerenes finally link up
Researchers have coaxed the cage-like molecules of carbon-70 into zigzagging polymers.
- Physics
Window Opens into Strange Nuclei
By creating peculiar atomic nuclei that contain not just protons and neutrons but also pairs of rare nuclear particles with so-called strange quarks inside, researchers are shedding new light on the fundamental structure of matter and how it behaves under extreme conditions, as in neutron stars.
- Ecosystems
Streamers could save birds from hooks
A test on active longline fishing boats finds that an inexpensive array of streamers can reduce accidental deaths of seabirds by more than 90 percent.
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Psychopaths may come in two varieties
Preliminary evidence suggests that some psychopaths, who exploit others and commit crimes without guilt or remorse, avoid criminal conviction by relying on a heightened emotional sensitivity to risky situations.
- Animals
20/20 lenses coat body of sea creature
The skeleton of brittlestars doubles as an array of optically precise lenses that rival plastic microlenses designed by engineers.
- Astronomy
Shocks jolt jet set galaxy, X rays reveal
A new image of the nearby galaxy Centaurus A reveals the first details of a phenomenon associated with the core of many galaxies: a huge jet of high-energy particles shooting out from a supermassive black hole.
- Earth
L.A. moves, but not in the way expected
Researchers monitoring small ground motions along faults in Southern California ended up detecting an altogether different phenomenon: the rise and fall of the ground as local governments pump billions of gallons of water into and out of the region's aquifers.
- Chemistry
Chemists redesign natural antifreeze
Researchers have synthesized a family of artificial molecules that resemble the compounds that keep Antarctic and Arctic fish from freezing.
- Ecosystems
Wanted: Reef Cleaners
Nearly 18 years after a near total die-off of algae-grazing urchins in the Caribbean, those herbivores are poised for a comeback—which could help save area corals.
- Chemistry
Chemistry of Colors and Curls
Chemists are using new technology and experiments to discover how hair becomes damaged and how to protect it.
