More Stories from the March 6, 2004 issue
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Keeping abreast of serotonin’s roles
Serotonin, a chemical typically associated with the brain, also controls milk production in mammary glands.
- Astronomy
Pulsar pas de deux
Astronomers have for the first time discovered two pulsars orbiting each other, offering the chance for new precision tests of Einstein's theory of general relativity.
- Health & Medicine
Gene transfer puts good fats in mammals
Scientists have used a worm gene to genetically engineer mice whose tissues are unusually rich in the heart-healthy fats found mainly in fish.
- Health & Medicine
Quantum sentinels
Quantum physics may soon help physicians track whether a cancer has spread.
- Tech
Silicon goes optical
The advent of a fast, light-manipulating microdevice made from silicon suggests that speedy optical-fiber links now too expensive for broad use in businesses and homes may soon become widespread.
- Chemistry
Clean hydrogen fuel from corn?
A new reactor can convert ethanol from corn into hydrogen fuel with enough efficiency to make the process economical.
- Planetary Science
Red Planet Makes a Splash: Rover finds gush of evidence for past water
A robotic rover on Mars has gathered what scientists are calling the best evidence to date that liquid water once flowed on the Red Planet.
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Sunny Solution: Lotion speeds DNA repair, protects mice from skin cancer
Snippets of DNA that activate a cell's DNA repair process may protect mice from skin cancer caused by ultraviolet radiation.
- Animals
Jungle Genes: First bird genome is decoded
Researchers have unveiled a draft of the first bird genome to be sequenced, a vintage chicken.
- Anthropology
Early Ancestors Come Together: Humanity’s roots may lie in single, diverse genus
Newly discovered fossil teeth in eastern Africa that are more than 5 million years old suggest that the earliest members of the human family evolved as a single, anatomically diverse genus.
- Physics
Bubble Fusion: Once-maligned claim rebounds
Researchers who reported 2 years ago that they created nuclear-fusion reactions inside bubbles imploding in a vat of liquid acetone have now bolstered their controversial claim with new evidence.
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Worst of Two Worlds: Hybrid mosquitoes spread West Nile virus
Interbreeding between two Old World mosquito species may explain why their blood-sucking brethren in the United States transmit West Nile virus to people as readily as they do.
- Earth
Lowering the Boom? Impact crater may predate extinction of the dinosaurs
Analyses of sediments from the Yucatán in Mexico suggest that an extraterrestrial impact there more than 65 million years ago actually happened about 300,000 years before mass extinctions of dinosaurs occurred.
- Earth
Killer Waves
Scientists are using sophisticated computer models, field studies of coastal geology, and data from tidal gauges to assess the tsunami risk for coastal residents.
- Tech
Body Builders
By growing stem cells on three- dimensional polymer scaffolds, tissue engineers hope to mimic natural tissue development and ultimately produce replacement body parts.
- Humans
Letters from the March 6, 2004, issue of Science News
All we have to fear In “9/11’s Fatal Road Toll: Terror attacks presaged rise in U.S. car deaths” (SN: 1/17/04, p. 37: 9/11’s Fatal Road Toll: Terror attacks presaged rise in U.S. car deaths), it was assumed that people who switched from planes to cars after the terrorist attacks did so because of fear. However, […]
