More Stories from the July 19, 2008 issue
- Animals
Squeaky chimp sex, or not
Female chimps tend toward silent sex when the other girls could overhear.
- Health & Medicine
Girl athletes’ energy crisis
Lack of regular periods in teenage female athletes stems from a hormone imbalance arising from inadequate energy intake.
- Health & Medicine
Where funny faces come from
Making a face might have helped human ancestors survive.
- Health & Medicine
Wishful thinking
Male athletes who think they are getting growth hormone claim to feel better and score higher in a jumping test while on a placebo.
- Anthropology
Numbers beyond words
New research with Amazonian villagers suggests that their language lacks number words but that they still comprehend precise quantities of objects.
- Agriculture
A vanilla Vanilla
The orchid that gives us vanilla beans has startlingly low genetic diversity, suggesting crops might be susceptible to pathogens, researchers report.
- Humans
Worth the cooties
Boys who attend preschool classes with a majority of girls do better developmentally than other boys.
- Physics
Left in the cold
An optical trap lets atoms in but not out, and it can be used to study matter at ultracold temperatures.
- Health & Medicine
Pain, numbness, pain
Some anesthetics not only cause a burning feeling when they're given, but can also increase the pain felt after surgery.
- Health & Medicine
Heel test
A simple, inexpensive ultrasound test of the heel might reveal whether a person is at risk of osteoporosis and should get more extensive tests.
- Health & Medicine
Ch-ch-ch-changes
Epigenetic shifts continue throughout a person’s lifetime, and the overall pattern of these shifts appears similar within families.
- Animals
Don’t blame the guys
Scientists take a new look at what drives female damselflies to look like males.
- Astronomy
Impact may have transformed Mars
Three teams suggest that a huge object slammed into Mars, giving the planet an unusually dualistic topography.
- Health & Medicine
Vessel rescue
A blood pressure medication limits damage to the aorta in people with Marfan syndrome, possibly signaling a new therapy for the condition.
- Space
Martian soil hints at water, nutrients
The first chemical analysis of dirt by the Mars Phoenix Lander supports the notion that liquid water flowed on the Red Planet at some point.
- Ecosystems
Ecosystem engineers
Nonnative earthworms are deliberately burying ragweed seeds, enhancing the weed’s growth, researchers report.
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- Health & Medicine
Sick and down
To fight off an infection or illness, the body shifts into a slow-down mode that mirrors some symptoms of depression. In fact, scientists now think the immune response itself may even cause the mood disorder.
- Physics
Large Hadron Collider
When the Large Hadron Collider powers up this fall, protons moving at almost the speed of light will collide with energies high enough, physicists hope, to solve matter’s biggest mysteries.
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Stranded: A whale of a mystery
Scientists generally agree that sonar can trigger strandings of certain whales, but no one really knows what leads these deep divers to the beach.
