More Stories from the January 29, 2005 issue
- Tech
Thrifty trucks go with the flow
Forcing air through strategically placed slits on a tractor trailer results in a major boost in fuel economy.
- Chemistry
Building artificial cells from scratch
Scientists have created artificial cells that can live and produce proteins as their natural counterparts do, but can't replicate.
- Tech
Congealing useful oddballs
A device for manipulating liquid droplets turns out to have the unexpected ability to fabricate tiny, solid balls with unusual, and potentially useful, patterned structures inside.
- Health & Medicine
Urine test signals pregnancy problem
A simple urine test can warn women that they have an increased risk of preeclampsia, a dangerous complication of pregnancy.
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Giardia Bares All: Parasite genes reveal long sexual history
Sexual reproduction started billions of years ago, as soon as life forms that have nuclei and organelles within their cells branched off from their structurally simpler ancestors.
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Lost Sight, Found Sound: Visual cortex sees way to acquiring new duties
Brain areas that are usually devoted solely to vision can take on new duties following severe or total sight loss.
- Math
Sizing Up Complex Webs: Close or far, many networks look the same
Complex networks, including the World Wide Web, have a common architecture with snowflakes and trees.
- Health & Medicine
Good Exposure: Contact with babies might lessen MS risk
People who grow up with younger siblings close to them in age are less likely to develop multiple sclerosis later in life than are people without such siblings.
- Plants
In a Snap: Leaf geometry drives Venus flytrap’s bite
Behind a Venus flytrap's rapid snap lies an extraordinary shape-changing mechanism.
- Chemistry
Hungry for Hydrogen: Microbes in hot springs feed on unlikely source
Microbes dwelling in Yellowstone National Park's hot springs draw their energy not from sulfur but from hydrogen.
- Humans
The Heights of School Science: Select student research rises to the top
Forty high school students have each earned a slot in the final round of the 2005 Intel Science Talent Search.
- Tech
Matrix Realized
Devices called brain-computer interfaces could give paralyzed patients the ability to flex mechanical limbs, steer a motorized wheelchair, or operate robots through sheer brainpower.
- Earth
When Mountains Fizz
Scientists are finding that the driving force behind a volcanic explosion is the same thing that propels spewing soda pop: bubbles.
- Health & Medicine
One in a Million
A 15-year-old girl in Wisconsin has survived a rabies infection without receiving the rabies vaccine, a first in medical history.
- Humans
Letters from the January 29, 2005, issue of Science News
Check it out In “Profiles in Melancholy, Resilience: Abused kids react to genetics, adult support” (SN: 11/20/04, p. 323), you report on a study in which it was found that female monkeys raised in a stressful situation drink alcohol to excess only if they possess just the short serotonin-transporter gene. If a positive correlation were […]
