More Stories from the July 23, 2005 issue
- Astronomy
Core mystery
Despite new images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the brightest known supernova of the past 400 years remains a puzzle for astronomers.
- Anthropology
People fired up Aussie extinctions
Early Australian settlers may have altered the continent's landscape around 50,000 years ago, leading to the extinction of many animal species.
- Agriculture
Soy-protein quality versus quantity
New tests show that as the protein yields of soybeans rise, the growth-enhancing quality of that protein as a food or feed decreases.
- Health & Medicine
A problem at hand for catchers
A young professional baseball catcher, who may receive more than 100 pitches per game thrown at more than 90 miles per hour, may be virtually certain to develop circulatory abnormalities in his catching hand.
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Yellow color gives microbe its power
The bright-yellow pigment that tints the bacteria that cause staph infections is pivotal to the microbe's virulence.
- Animals
Ladybug mom provides infertile eggs as baby food
When food gets scarce, multicolored Asian ladybugs lay extra dud eggs that can end up as emergency rations for their young.
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- Earth
Ultrasound solution to toxin pollution
Ultrasound treatment of water can generate reactive chemicals that destroy potentially lethal algal toxins.
- Animals
Meat-Eating Caterpillar: It hunts snails and ties them down
A newly named species of Hawaiian caterpillar sneaks up on a resting snail and quickly spins silk strands around it, lashing it to the spot, and then eats it.
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Bacterial Snitch: Species competes by telling on another
A bacterial species that typically colonizes people's noses may win out over another bacterium by tattling to the host's immune system.
- Earth
Under Pressure: High-stress tests show surprising change in a mantle mineral’s behavior
Compressing a common iron-bearing mineral to the pressures found deep within Earth makes the material much stiffer, which might explain why seismic waves travel particularly fast through some zones of rock.
- Tech
Tapping Tiny Pores: Nanovalves control chemical releases
After creating arrays of nanovalves, each made from a single molecule, chemists used them to generate minuscule chemical discharges.
- Astronomy
Crater Shake: Tremors erased asteroid’s topography
Seismic shock waves from a large meteor impact on the asteroid Eros might have rearranged surface rubble, destroying crater structures over much of the asteroid.
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Reflections of Primate Minds: Mirror images strike monkeys as special
Capuchin monkeys don't react to their own mirror images as they do to strangers, perhaps reflecting an intermediate stage of being able to distinguish oneself from others.
- Health & Medicine
Tumors in Touch: Cancer cells spur vessel formation through contact
Some tumor cells use a newfound mechanism to prompt neighboring cells into forming blood vessels that then nourish the cancer.
- Earth
Toxic Surfs
Scientists have discovered not only three new mechanisms by which an alga species in Florida water can poison but also a trio of natural antidotes produced within that same species.
- Plants
Mommy Greenest
Green leafy moms take care of their offspring in ways that go beyond wrapping them in nice, snug seed coats and packing a nutritious lunch for them.
- Humans
Letters from the July 23, 2005, issue of Science News
Clearly a problem? “Built for Blurs: Jellyfish have great eyes that can’t focus” (SN: 5/14/05, p. 307) states that “the resulting blurred view is good enough for spotting large objects such as mangrove roots.” It seems to me that the article is missing the crucial biological question presented by these eyes. My understanding is that […]
