More Stories from the June 16, 2007 issue
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Mental letdown for antipsychotic meds
People with chronic schizophrenia get surprisingly modest improvements in memory and learning from new as well as old antipsychotic medications.
- Health & Medicine
Nutrients linked to brain lesions
The more calcium and vitamin D elderly individuals consume, the greater the number and size of lesions that show up in their brains.
- Health & Medicine
Right combination of malaria drugs?
Children in Uganda who contract malaria recover faster with a drug based on artemisinin, derived from Chinese wormwood, than with a longstanding medical remedy.
- Earth
Age and gender affect soot’s toxic impact
Except in young females, small blood vessels in rodents lost the ability to precisely regulate blood flow after exposure to an oily constituent of diesel soot.
- Earth
Dust Bowl affected midwestern climate
During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, immense clouds of airborne soil blocked so much sunlight that much of the Great Plains region was significantly cooler than normal during summer months.
- Earth
Darker days during Arctic summer
Satellite observations indicate that Arctic regions reflected less sunlight into space in the summer of 2006 than in other recent years, a change that may exacerbate the warming of Earth's climate.
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How sea turtle hatchlings know where to crawl
Newly hatched sea turtles use a variety of senses, not just sight, to find their way to the ocean.
- Earth
Trouble for forests of the northern U.S. Rockies?
Climate change over the coming decades may cause forests in northern portions of the U.S. Rockies to stop absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and instead become net emitters of the gas.
- Paleontology
Big and Birdlike: Chinese dinosaur was 3.5 meters tall
Paleontologists have unearthed the remains of a gigantic birdlike dinosaur, 3.5 meters tall, that lived 70 million years ago in what is now China.
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Breast Cancer Lead: Overactive gene is linked to disease
A mutated gene that's overly active in breast cancer cells could offer a new target for cancer drugs.
- Plants
Easy There, Bro: A plant can spot and favor close kin
A little beach plant can recognize its siblings as long as their roots grow in nearby soil.
- Tech
Improbability Drive: Focus on rare actions speeds chemical simulations
A new algorithm speeds simulations of chemical reactions by focusing on rare but crucial molecular motions.
- Health & Medicine
Vaccine Harvest: Cholera fighter could be easy to swallow
An edible vaccine, made by genetically engineering rice, safeguards mice against the toxin produced by cholera bacteria.
- Planetary Science
Shifting Ocean: Tipsy Mars may explain undulating shoreline
Evidence that Mars once had a vast ocean gains support from a proposal that the planet was tipped halfway over on its side several billion years ago.
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Borderline Aid: Psychotherapy soothes personality ailment
Three forms of psychotherapy each provide substantial relief from symptoms of borderline personality disorder.
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Brain Gain
The brain constantly sprouts new neurons, a recently discovered phenomenon that neuroscientists and drugmakers are working to understand and harness.
- Earth
Wildfire, Walleyes, and Wine
An international panel's latest report on the impacts of climate change highlights an overlooked need: preparing for droughts, floods, heat waves, and other disasters.
- Humans
Letters from the June 16, 2007, issue of Science News
Bigger picture Reading “Pictures Posing Questions: The next steps in photography could blur reality” (SN: 4/7/07, p. 216), I was struck by the similarity between the image that used a cone-shaped mirror and the images you get from gravitational lensing. As the same data are available in both types of images, it ought to be […]
