More Stories from the August 9, 2003 issue
- Physics
Gluing building blocks with geometry
Using blocks with simple shapes, researchers have found ways to construct strong panels with no fasteners securing most of the blocks.
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Naps with stages spark learning
Napping shows potential as a way to stimulate learning.
- Chemistry
Chemical rings act as a minirotor
Interlocked molecular rings form new minirotors, including some in which scientists can control the rotational direction.
- Health & Medicine
Clot buster attached to red blood cells avoids complications
Attaching a clot-busting drug to red blood cells limits the drug's side effects, a study in animals shows.
- Earth
For European lakes, how clean is clean enough?
New research on lakes in Denmark suggests that agriculture has been affecting water quality there for more than 5,000 years.
- Paleontology
A human migration fueled by dung?
When people made their way from Asia to the Americas, the path they took may have been covered in dung.
- Earth
Large lake floods scoured New Zealand
A volcanic region of New Zealand’s North Island experienced immense floods and severe erosion when lakes filling the craters of dormant volcanoes burst through the craters' rims and poured down the slopes.
- Health & Medicine
Virus Shield: Ebola vaccine works fast in monkey test
Tests on monkeys show that an experimental vaccine can build immunity against Ebola virus within a month, suggesting the vaccine might help contain outbreaks of the deadly pathogen.
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Winning Bet: Horse and mule clones cross the finish line
Scientists have for the first time cloned a mule and a horse.
- Paleontology
Three Species No Moa? Fossil DNA analysis yields surprise
Analyses of genetic material from the fossils of large flightless birds called moas suggest that three types of the extinct birds may not be separate species after all.
- Anthropology
New World Newcomers: Men’s DNA supports recent settlement of the Americas
New data on genetic differences among the Y chromosomes of Asian and Native American men support the notion that people first reached the Americas less than 20,000 years ago.
- Ecosystems
Shark Serengeti: Ocean predators have diversity hot spots
The first search for oceanic spots of exceptional diversity in predators has turned up marine versions of the teeming Serengeti plains.
- Tech
Shining True: Marking original documents with a lick of gloss
Scientists have a new way of making forgery-proof documents by using laser color printers to embed hologramlike images in a document’s glossy surface.
- Physics
Electric Foam: Scientists uncover basis of material oddball
Specially treated polypropylene foam can mimic the defining behavior and other desirable properties of ceramic piezoelectric materials, which generate electric signals when squeezed.
- Plants
Emergency Gardening
High-tech tissue culture is helping some ultrarare plants finally have sprouts of their own.
- Materials Science
Layered Approach
A decade-old method for creating thin coatings is poised to move from the lab to countless low- and high-tech products.
